How I found out I had cancer in my 20s

This is how I found out that I had melanoma skin cancer at 27. So it was actually my mum who first noticed this spot in December of 2024. She said it didn't look quite right and I should get it checked. I was getting skin checks at this point every 12 months, which a lot of people I know aren't doing that. And when I went to the skin specialist, they basically said, look, you're quite young. It's probably not a melanoma. Let's just watch it for three months and then come back and see if it changes. But I'm also a nurse. I'm a little bit of a hypochondriac. So I had already looked outside, looking back on photos of myself and had found this spot that my mum was worried about and had seen that it actually had changed quite a lot. So I showed her these photos as well. She still wasn't that concerned. But I said, look, I prefer to have it removed. So let's just take it out. So the specialist listened to me. She removed it. She said to find out your results in about a week's time. So it was a very long wait. Spot that I had looked like this. Now, a lot of people would say I've got moles that look like that. I personally thought that I'd always had it. I kind of got used to the fact that it was there. But looking back at photos, you can see that it's actually changed quite a lot. I've probably had the spot since I was 25 or 26. So I'm very lucky. I'm 30 now. It started like this and then it has evolved into this one. The results came back and it turned out that it was melanoma skin cancer. Had about a million scans once diagnosed to check for spread. Had to do a second biopsy to check that it hadn't gone any deeper, which it had. And then I ended up having to have a third removal and a lymph node removal under my armpit and also a general anaesthetic surgery where they removed more of the skin cancer. Melanomas, you might not know, can travel to other distal organs just like any other cancer can, and can be fatal within as little as months. So one thing that I wish I had done was wear more sunscreen, which I always religiously used sunscreen on my face, but I was always quite bad with using it on my body, particularly when I go out for a run. I never really wore it on my back. So that's one thing that I wish I had to change. And I'm much better with it now. I've never really been someone who goes to the beach and just tans. But it can still happen to anybody. So please get your skin checked and don't be like me.