TAMMI LOTTER

Stage:Stage I

I was born in Durban, South Africa in 1977 and moved to London in 2001 and was having the time of my life! I was living in an exciting city, traveling the world and meeting new people – I couldn’t have been happier. I had noticed a new small black mole on my right arm that had appeared just below my shoulder but as I have several moles all over my body I didn’t pay much attention to it. On a routine visit to my GP in 2004 when I had flu, I asked him about removing the mole (purely from a vanity point of view!) Thankfully he had specialized in moles so when he had a closer look at it he agreed to remove it and said it would be sent off for testing. I received a phone call from the Doctor several days later with the diagnosis that this was in fact a melanoma. He told me that it was stage 1A and the breslow thickness was 0.62mm. He explained that I would need to have plastic surgery on my arm after a wide local excision to ensure it did not spread. I took the news very well as I knew it had been caught early and that I was likely to be fine thereafter. It was only a few days later when it really sunk in that if I hadn’t have been vain and wanted to remove the ugly mole, or if the mole had been somewhere else on my body where I wouldn’t have noticed it, the outcome would have been very different. That gave me a serious fright because I was so lucky things had worked out the way they did. I had always spent time in the sun growing up and whilst living in London used the occasional sun bed in winter. Looking back now it is incredible that even in 2004 there was not much awareness about the dangers of sun beds. After the wide local excision I went for check ups every 6 months for 5 years but did not have any further issues. I moved back to South Africa in 2009 and in 2012 had to have plastic surgery on my nose to remove an invasive basal cell carcinoma. I go for regular check ups every year and try to spread the message to family and friends that it can happen to you and that skin cancer can be deadly! Please continue to use sun screen and protect your body from the sun at peak times of the day – once you have been affected by skin cancer there is a high possibility it will reoccur. Stay vigilant.