A mother was left with her skull exposed after she had to have a cancerous piece of her head cut out.
Mary Bentley’s husband cried following the procedure, which saw a suspect piece of skin bigger than a £2 coin removed by surgeons concerned about possible skin cancer.
The 34-year-old grew up ‘in the pool and on the lake’ when it was hot in Texas. As a self-confessed ‘sunworshipper’, she worked on her tan as much as she could.
She wanted a ‘golden tan’ all year around and started using sunbeds when she went to high school.
But the mum-of-three is ‘paying for it now’, with multiple skin cancer scares.
The most dramatic incident saw Mary forced to get a 4.2cm by 2.6cm layer of skin removed from the top of her head in July.
She was getting checked by a dermotologist, as she now does every three-to-six months, and they noticed a discoloured mark on the top of her head.
Test results came back a week later showing the mark was melanoma – abnormally developed skin cells.
Mary had to be awake for the surgery but was given a local anaesthetic.
She said: ‘That was disgusting because as they’re working on your scalp while you’re awake, you can hear the scissors snipping and them cutting your scalp.’
Once the first layer was cut out, doctors bandaged up Mary’s scalp and left her waiting for four hours while they tested the surrounding areas of her skin.
Some layers were still showing traces of melanoma in them so surgeons had to go back to operating.
Mary had to wait with an open wound for another two hours while doctors made sure everything cancerous had been cut out.
The size of the chunk of Mary’s head that eventually got removed was so big the shock made her husband cry.
Mary said: ‘After that they called me back and said they got it all and I was so relieved because I didn’t want to go through that again.’
She was then placed under general anaesthetic and a plastic surgeon stitched up her scar with 13 staples.
After the traumatic experience, Mary decided to speak out and encourage people to take care of their skin.
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She said: ‘It’s not a joke, it is serious and it’s not fun to go through. I’m lucky I didn’t have to go through further treatment because it didn’t spread.
‘The beautiful bronze skin is not worth it, baking in the sun and tanning beds is not worth it because it could be lethal.
‘You don’t think of that when you’re tanning but it could cost you your life. I just hope people learn to take care of their skin.
‘Nowadays they have all these fake tanners if you want to be bronze for the weekend – just go buy one of them, it’s way safer.’
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