Sara's story - video transcript

Sara Allaban - Northampton

I started using sunbeds when I was seventeen because I joined a gym, and they were just there so I'd go on them to have a tan for when I was going out. I used to fall asleep on them, I remember burning on them one Valentine's Day, I went bright red - I actually peeled from using a sunbed.

I had an all year tan. So even when I was 21 and went to Ibiza that year, I was brown before I even went. I carried on until I was about 27, I didn't want to get wrinkles and that's why I stopped using them, nothing to do with skin cancer because it had never occurred to me before.

It was a few years later when I actually got the melanoma, it came back and bit me on the bum.

When I was pregnant with my third child Destiny, I was creaming my body one evening when I ran my hand over my bum and felt a spot. A couple of days later I had a look and it was actually a mole. It was a bit jagged around the edge, had darker bits, was raised and it was itchy and I could feel it when I touched it so it did have the warning signs, but it just wasn't very big.

I went to the doctors virtually straight away, and they took the mole off the following week.

[Footage of Sara's scar post-surgery]

Then when I went to the Oxford hospital and they took away more skin, I cried and just drove home thinking, oh my god, I could die.

[Footage of Sara with her three children]

Every time I saw the kids, I think it was even before Destiny was 2 weeks old. If anything happened to me, they wouldn't remember me the littler ones.

I wish I'd known the dangers, when I was seventeen, of sunbeds. The fake tans back in the day weren't great. Now they're so much better and I just say, use them. You can get a tan out of a bottle and it looks better. And you're not going to burn, and you're not going to peel, and you're not going to die. You're just going to look brown.

I don't think people realise that people do die from skin cancer because you don't hear about it. When I had it, friends would say, "well you don’t die from it" and I tell them "yes you do".

Finding skin cancer early saves lives

Find out more about the signs of skin cancer and how to reduce your risk - www.sunsmart.org.uk (The SunSmart campaign is funded by the UK Health Departments)