Katherine Ryan has confirmed that she has been diagnosed with cancer for the second time after she grew suspicious of a mole on her arm.
During an appearance on the Telling Everybody Everything podcast, the mother of three revealed that she had her suspicions dismissed by both the NHS and a private clinic before the results came back confirming that she did have a melanoma. The comedian later had an operation to have the mole removed, urging fans on TikTok to check their own moles if they were concerned.
"The only reason that they agreed to remove it was because I went to a fancy, private place in South Kensington, and I paid them a grand," Katherine explained.
"I don't believe that on the NHS they ever would have removed this mole, because I don't know how long ago, I'm looking through my emails to find out how long ago, I think six to eight months ago, I went to another private clinic and gave them £300 for a seven-minute consultation."
© Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty IThe comedian continued: "I was in that room for seven minutes, and the doctor was like, 'I do melanoma on the NHS, it's all I do, I know all about skin cancer, I’m the man, this is not melanoma, goodbye.'
"He was really nice to me, and he gave me the news that I wanted. I think it's really easy to take a diagnosis of 'you're healthy' and just walk away. But the mole kept changing, and I know a lot about melanoma. I just felt like this mole wasn't right, it's on my arm, I showed pictures of it on my social media."
© GettyKatherine revealed she then had to urge the private consultant to do an operation, saying: "I went in and I wanted the doctor to remove a bigger piece of it and stitch it up in a straight line, but even when he looked at it, he was like, 'not melanoma, totally fine, I will do the shave and send it away for histology, and then if it comes back with anything, if there’s any borders that we missed, then we'll do the deeper cut.'
"And I was like, 'just do the deeper cut now, like just do it.' He's like, 'well, it's half the price for you, and you don't need the deeper cut, let's just take it off and we'll test it.' And I thought, 'alright, we'll take it off and we'll test it fine.'
© Ian West - PA Images, Getty"So he rang me today, and it did come back melanoma, 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 TV star confirmed that she had since undergone an operation to have the mole removed.
© Getty/Jordan PettittFollowing the news, Katherine was forced to take to Instagram to issue a statement as some reports focused on her apparent criticism of the NHS.
"Hello, I'm just in a meeting right now, but I realised that the melanoma thing from my podcast got picked up and with added commentary like, 'takes a swipe at the NHS'," she began.
© Instagram"I've made a TikTok explaining because it's just the most concise way and it's fine and it's not a big deal. So don't stress."
Katherine was previously diagnosed with a melanoma when she was studying at university, after discovering a "golf ball-sized lump" on her leg. The lump was successfully removed.
© InstagramMelanoma is a less common type of skin cancer but can behave in a more aggressive way and can be more serious. Around 16,700 people are diagnosed with melanoma in the UK each year. The number of people diagnosed with melanoma has increased over the last few decades.
The risk of developing melanoma depends on many things, including lifestyle factors and some medical conditions. In the UK, around 85 out of 100 melanomas (around 85%) are caused by too much ultraviolet radiation (sun damage).
