In 2016, I was at a wedding and a friend suggested I get the large dark mole on my shoulder checked out. I went to my GP, and he sent me to get it taken off. I had surgery to remove it and was told that it was melanoma, but they had caught it early so I should be fine. I was followed up for 5 years by St Vincents Dermatology Team and nothing else really popped up on my skin that was concerning. I was due to have my final appointment with Dermatology in November 2021 before being discharged for good but on that very day, I was in a room, upstairs in the hospital being told that I had progressed to stage 4 and my melanoma was now terminal.

This all happened during Covid and what alerted me was fainting two mornings in a row. I’m a fainter anyway so I wasn’t that worried and I thought maybe I had Covid. The test came back negative, so I went to my GP, who took one look at me and sent me straight into hospital in an ambulance (I collapsed again as he was taking blood). I thought it was all very dramatic, but it turned out I was so anaemic that one of the doctors in A&E told me that I could have dropped dead within a day or two had I not gone to the doctor.

17 blood transfusions later and I was going downhill very quickly. I got very bad at one stage and was asked to sign a DNR late one evening as they weren’t sure if I would make it through the night. At the time I don’t think I realised how sick I was. CT scans showed that I had cancer in several places, including my breast. They weren’t sure if it was breast cancer or the melanoma that I was diagnosed with 5 years previously, so they had to do a biopsy. The biopsy confirmed it was melanoma. When I sat in that room in a wheelchair, it was surreal. I laughed out loud when they told me I had stage 4 melanoma because I didn’t believe it was happening to me.

This was the very day that I was due to have my last ever appointment with the Dermatology Team, it was the day I was supposed to be sitting in a room in another part of the hospital being told ‘go on and get on with your life now, you have nothing more to worry about’. Instead, I was sitting in a wheelchair, not able to walk. Professor Crown came to my bedside and told me that things weren’t looking good but he would do all in his power to help me. He assured me that treatments for melanoma had improved significantly in recent years and if we were having the same conversation 5 or 10 years ago, it would be a very sad conversation he would be having with me.

I was moved to the oncology ward as my condition deteriorated very quickly from that point. I was started on an immunotherapy clinical trial and had one infusion. My scans were not looking good and the tumour in my stomach was getting larger and my haemoglobin levels were continuing to drop despite all the blood transfusions. I had mets in my hip bone too and this was causing me immense pain, so I was referred to the Palliative Care team to manage my pain and nausea, and they were a great help. I was put on TPN as I could no longer eat, and I had a morphine pump fitted to manage pain. I had a port and a PICC line fitted to help with all the various infusions and TPN I was being given and for taking daily bloods.

Prof Crown wasn’t happy with how I was progressing on the clinical trial, so he decided to switch me to targeted therapy, which consisted of 12 tablets a day. I started the tablets on Christmas Eve so my Christmas dinner in 2021 consisted of a petit filous and a handful of tablets in my hospital bed. All of this was happening during Covid, so I couldn’t have visitors unless pre-arranged with the team and visiting was strictly limited to immediate family and a couple of close friends.

Thankfully, I started to respond better to the tablets and things started to get a bit better for me. My mobility was completely gone though as I was in so much pain with my hip. I was confined to the bed and couldn’t even use a bed pan. I had a lot of physio while I was in hospital and I was seeing the dietician every day when they were weaning me off the TPN onto normal food again. I saw a psycho-oncologist to help me come to terms with what was happening. I found these sessions very difficult because I was too sick to even engage my brain to think about things. There was one Palliative Care nurse and she was amazing.

I used to look forward to her visits every day as she would lift my spirits and tell me all about what was going on in the world – a world I wasn’t sure I would ever get back out to. She treated me like a friend rather than a patient and we chatted about everything and anything to take my mind off the cancer. She did far more for me than any psychologist, she even made me a little bag to carry my morphine pump, something small that meant the world to me. Every day she came to me she left me feeling so much better.

I eventually left hospital in February 2022, after spending exactly 3 months in St Vincents. I left in a wheelchair and had to get myself back on my feet very slowly. It was a real shock to the system going from being a fit, healthy person to a cancer patient with muscle loss and weakness. The tablets were working and things were starting to shrink slowly. I continued to attend the Day Care Centre in St Vincents and have scans every 3 months. I was still in pain and had a lot of nausea even after I left the hospital but over time and with the help of different medications, these have mostly subsided now.

I still suffer from fatigue which I try my best to manage. I got back walking and eventually got enough strength to get out for a walk every day. That was my physio to get me back to a normal enough level of fitness. I was off work for a total of 11 months, but I am now back working full time. Work have been very supportive thank God.

Over the last few years, I have been concentrating on staying well and active to maintain some level of fitness despite the fatigue. To give back, I have raised money for the Marie Keating Foundation by participating in Mondello24, a 24-hour cycle race on the track in Mondello and I have also fundraised for the Irish Heart Foundation by abseiling off the Smithfield Tower. I remain well, thank God, and I have had clear scans for over a year, which I am delighted about.

I have become involved in PPI for Cancer Trials Ireland and the Cancer Centre at St Vincents Hospital Group. I’m very active on social media when it comes to sun safety awareness and I am a member of the Coalition Against Sunbeds.

I want to share my story as a story of hope, as I didn’t have any stories of hope when I was first diagnosed at stage 4. Five years on and I am living a happy and relatively healthy life after I almost died.

As most Irish people will attest to, we really don’t get enough information around the importance of sunscreen and how much of it we should use. It really wasn’t something I gave much thought to until a routine visit to my GP led to a diagnosis and an emotional rollercoaster that I could not have prepared myself for.

My GP had concerns about a lump on my ear and referred me to the hospital for the plastic surgery team to investigate it. I had no suspicion of melanoma but then came the diagnosis.
In March 2022, I was diagnosed with Amelanotic Melanoma on my ear. The next steps are a blur as treatment commenced. It was mid Covid which made the whole process more challenging and lonelier.

Thankfully, with my wife’s support I made it through the scans, tests, appointments and surgery. I was also fortunate in having a very understanding employer, good friends, colleagues and supportive relatives. Everyone I encountered in the hospital or in my GP were wonderful and reassuring. A special thanks to the makers of the tea and toast post surgery. They were all invaluable to me and I am forever grateful. The Scanxiety is something you are just not prepared for. This is the underlying stress before every scan, test or appointment. It sticks with you until the results and then you get a reprieve until the next time. There is almost always this baseline anxiety that sticks with you, like some form of PTSD.

My advice to others is get some cancer buddies from relatives and friends who have been through any cancer. The rollercoaster is the same. It is a level of understanding that only those who have been through it can understand.

Avail of any supports available, practical, emotional whatever you can. I found the Melanoma Support Ireland group brilliant.

I find the SunSmart App very useful. I could write a book on suncreams, which ones for near the eyes, which ones for arms etc. Read the quantity needed on a suncream bottle, this was an eye opener for me. A 200ml bottle typically is about six applications for face, arms, legs, etc.
Putting on suncream on a midwinter’s day or before sunrise if you are going travelling is a bit odd still but this matters.

When looking at my possible causes the most likely cause is from sunburn incidents in childhood with blistering. Parents are much better informed now than when I was growing up.
I have never used a sun bed and I am in full support of a complete ban on them.
I hope that by sharing my experience and advice it can help people make more informed decisions about being SunSmart, maybe go to their GP sooner or feel a little less alone in their experience.

I’ve always been very fair-skinned, so I knew I needed to be careful in the sun - especially after losing my uncle to melanoma when he was just 19. While living in London, I noticed a mole on my forehead had started to itch. Even though I was initially told it was ‘nothing’, I trusted my instincts and kept pushing until it was removed. A few weeks later, I got the news: it was melanoma, already at Stage 2. Hearing the word cancer was terrifying. In that moment, I genuinely thought I was going to die.

I had surgery on my face, and eight lymph nodes were removed for testing. Thankfully, the cancer hadn’t spread. I felt incredibly lucky and, for a time, I believed that chapter of my life was behind me. I moved back to Ireland and life slowly returned to normal - until March 2020, when I found a lump on my jawline. Tests confirmed my worst fear: the melanoma was back, it had spread to my lymph nodes, and this time it was Stage 3. I needed more surgery to remove two lumps, which left me with significant scarring on my face.

Thankfully, I was able to access targeted treatment quickly and responded really well. I had an incredible medical team around me, but it was still a long and demanding road. I remained on treatment for two and a half years, learning to live with the uncertainty that comes with cancer while trying to hold down a full-time job and live as normal a life as I could.

After my second diagnosis and recovery, I knew I wanted to do something meaningful with what I had been through. I decided to explore in the area of cancer support, and I returned to education to complete a degree in counselling and psychotherapy. I’m now in my final year and have found the process challenging but a rewarding path to take.

Then, in September 2024, the cancer came back for a third time in the same area on my jawline. This time, I began immunotherapy. Once again, I was very fortunate to respond well to treatment. I was also given the opportunity to have radiotherapy, along with another surgery. While it has been another huge challenge, I’ve faced it with a very different mindset - stronger, more informed, and more determined than ever.

I’m here today because the original mole was on my face - somewhere I could see it. That made all the difference. Melanoma has changed my life in ways I never could have imagined, and now I do everything I can to encourage people to protect their skin, trust their instincts, and get anything unusual checked. A tan is never worth the risk.

In 2021 following a holiday, I finally made an appointment with my GP regarding what I thought were recurring cold sores. My GP Dr. Paul Campbell felt it needed further investigation and I was referred to ENT Consultant Mr Liam Skinner. After a number of tests, it was discovered I had cancer in my lip.

I had to have an operation which led to having 2cm of my lip removed. This thankfully did not need any follow up treatment. Mr Skinner felt that my body skin in general was sun damaged and referred me to a Dermatologist Dr. William O’Connor for further review. I had my first appointment in January 2023 and following on from this, he took a biopsy from my eyelid. Thankfully, this came back as benign.

While I was under the care of Mr. O’Connor in Cork, I continued to be monitored by Mr Skinner in Waterford. In the summer of 2023 after an examination, he noticed damaged skin on my scalp.
A biopsy of my scalp revealed I had cancer again. I had a surgical procedure under local anaesthetic to remove it. On follow up he felt that I should go and see another ENT consultant in Beaumont Hospital, Mr Neville Shine. And in December 2023, this led to further surgery on my scalp going right down to the cranium. Mr Shine recommended a course of radiotherapy. I had ten sessions in UPMC, Whitfield, Waterford from February 2024 to March 2024. And thankfully, it was a success.

I continued having yearly check-ups with Mr O Connor which led to me having a further biopsy, this time from my neck in 2024 and then my nose in 2025, which all turned out to be clear.
I continue to have check-ups in Waterford and Cork and to date, nothing has caused alarm.
I have an active outdoor lifestyle, walking, golfing and play padel. I am more sun smart than ever. I wear large, brimmed hats and top up with sunscreen regularly.

My advice to all people, young and old is to cover up in the sun and wear sunscreen.