“I feel hugely fortunate. If it hadn’t been for this screening, I don’t know if I’d have discovered I had skin cancer”

When 54-year-old Karen Smout received an email offering her a Check4Cancer screening service, it was just the nudge she needed to have a skin cancer assessment.

“What drew me to Check4Cancer was the offer of an assessment of every mole on my body. I’ve always had a lot of moles, and have developed more in the past few years, so that was playing on my mind.

"I’d been to the doctor once or twice in the past and asked him to look at a couple, but the response was always ‘it’s fine’. Now I know that was because I was pointing him towards my bigger, lumpier moles and, although those aren’t very attractive cosmetically, they are not the ones that you need to worry about. It’s the flat ones you should look out for.

"I’ve always been conscious that, as a fair-skinned redhead, I might be more at risk - so I wasn’t really surprised when the results of the initial assessment questionnaire said that - but I’m also not one for sunbathing. I don’t tan, so there’s never been any point! And my skin also doesn’t burn as easily as some people’s.

"It cost around £175 to have the mole screening done. Not cheap, but my husband also thought it was a good idea, and we knew the NHS wouldn’t have the time or resources to offer me such a detailed scan. As it turned out, it was worth every penny.

"I received an appointment date quite quickly and for a clinic in Cambridge, which is only about an hour from me. It was such a thorough and careful process. I stripped down to my underwear, and the woman examined every single mole on my body through a little magnifying glass. She found two that she thought were mildly concerning - one on my back and one on a shoulder blade. She took photos of them, and the subsequent report advised that I go through my GP to have them investigated further.

"They weren’t the sort of moles that would have concerned me - not least because I couldn’t really see them! The one on my back was very dark brown and very flat, but it was less than a centimetre in diameter, so quite small.

"When the GP examined them, he also wasn’t worried but referred me for a check by an NHS specialist, just in case. The specialist in Ipswich didn’t seem overly concerned either, but said it was probably prudent to remove the one on my back. It was done just two weeks later, under local anaesthetic and was very easy. They were all so lovely there - they kept me distracted with some chatter and I didn’t feel a thing.

"It was when the hospital asked me to come in to discuss the results that I suspected there might be a problem, and I was right. They told me that what they had removed was very superficial and low activity, but it was still a melanoma, so more needed to be done. That was hard to hear, even if I had been expecting it, so I did get a bit emotional, but all I could think was, ‘thank God I had that skin check’. I hadn’t had any symptoms to suggest that I might have skin cancer. The mole wasn’t itchy, or any of the things that we expect a suspicious mole to be.

"I was directed to a consultant who was a melanoma specialist and who explained that he would need to remove about 3cm more around the area where the mole had been, and also check if the cancer had travelled into the lymph nodes in my armpit. If so, those would need to be removed too.

"That meant having an operation, but thanks to a clever process using a dye and radioactive substance, they could see exactly which lymph nodes needed removing and only had to take out three. Of those, only one had a tiny amount of melanoma in it - and the consultant is confident that removing it is all the treatment I would need. It is such a relief!

"I really cannot thank Check4Cancer enough. If I hadn’t received that email, I doubt I would have done anything about it - so I’m now urging everyone I know to do the same."