Comedian Katherine Ryan has revealed that she has been diagnosed with skin cancer for the second time.
The 41-year-old shared the story of investigating her mole on her podcast, Telling Everybody Everything.
Watch the video above
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The mother of three previously had stage II melanoma in her early twenties, with a mole on her leg removed and leaving a hole.
So when she found another mole on her arm, she decided to take action.
The Canadian actress first went to a private clinic in the UK, where she is based, paying £300 (approx. $617) for a seven minute consultation, in which the doctor – who said he also worked for the public health system NHS and diagnosed skin cancer all the time – told the comedian that the mole was definitively not melanoma.
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But Ryan still felt off about the mole. “I think it’s really easy to take a diagnosis of you’re healthy and just walk away,” she shared on her podcast.
“You go, ‘Great, the doctor said I’m healthy’, and you walk away and you don’t think about it again, because that is the easiest news. But the mole kept changing… I just felt like this mole wasn’t right.”
The Duchess star decided to then seek a second opinion, with the second doctor also dismissing her concerns. However, he did agree to shave the mole off and send it off for further testing just in case.
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“He rang me today and it did come back melanoma,” shared Ryan, “And he said, it’s early melanoma. And he was shocked. He’s like, ‘It doesn’t look like melanoma, but it is melanoma’.”
The comedian then had to go back and get more of the mole removed to prevent it coming back.
The star then reflected on having to advocate for herself in these medical situations.
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“It just feels crazy to me, like what could have happened if I hadn’t been my own advocate – and I will continue to be my own advocate – if I hadn’t pushed, if I had taken that good answer the first time and walked away, then I would have had melanoma just growing and spreading in my arm.”
Ryan is currently in a civil partnership with Bobby Kootstra from 2019, and has three children in total; a teenage daughter, a son born June 2021 and a daughter born December 2022.
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