Woman warning of the dangers of sun damage leaves TikTok viewers stunned by shocking twist end
A WOMAN warning others to avoid sunbeds shared a video with a shocking twist.
Nickie Murtagh, 36, posted to TikTok using a filter to show the sun damage on her skin.
She said: “There you have it. Stay off the sunbeds and use SPF girls, they’re not lying.”
But while Nickie led us to believe the pigmentation on her face was the worst of it, she had more to show viewers.
Nickie, from New Maldon, Surrey, said, “while we are at it, let’s check out the skin cancer”, before tilting her scalp towards the camera.
At the crown of her head was a permanent ping-ball sized bald patch.
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Nickie previously told The Sun she was left with a gaping ‘crater’ on the top of her head after being diagnosed with skin cancer.
Doctors removed a cancerous lump and skin around it during a two-hour procedure in December 2018.
A skin graft was taken from her thigh – which Nickie shows in the TikTok video – to cover the hole in her head.
“Afterwards, I was left with felt like a sizeable crater on my head,” Nickie said.
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“When I held up my phone and took a picture, so I could see what it looked like, I was shocked by how much of my scalp had been removed.
“Then the hole was packed with the tissue from my leg and a dressing was applied while it healed.
“But thankfully it was good news was, when the tissue was examined, it was clear of cancer.”
However, after her surgery, the mum-of-three said she ‘felt depressed’ and feared she was a ‘ticking timebomb’.
The childminder is now dedicated to raising awareness of the harms of sun exposure and sunbeds.
In her 20s, Nickie admits she would go on sunbeds for around eight to 12 minutes a session.
But she would never exceed the recommended usage, so didn’t think much of it.
She said she often ‘forgot to wear sun cream’ and was ‘too vain to wear hats’.
Nickie said in 2019: “I knew all about being safe from the sun. But my failure to apply that knowledge to myself, has left me with a hole in my head and scarring to my leg.
“At first I kept thinking, I am not the ‘typical’ skin cancer patient who has taken a lot of holidays abroad and been a sun worshipper.
“But now I realise, there is no typical skin cancer patient.
“We all need to be sun and skin aware and adults must take as much care as children.
“From now on I will always fear the sun. I want to shout from the rooftops the damage it has done to my skin – and my mental health. The scars aren’t just on the outside.”
In 2016, Nickie noticed a bald patch the size of a little fingernail along the exposed parting in her blonde hair.
“I booked an appointment with my GP, and was told I had a small cyst that was nothing to worry about, and could safely remain untreated.
“But over the next two years, it continued slowly growing. Eventually it was the size of a one pence coin.”
After her friends and family urged her to get the strange lump checked again, Nickie was eventually diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma (BCC).
BCC is one of the most common forms of non-melanoma skin cancer.
It typically appears as a skin-coloured bump that can look pearly and shiny, according to the Mayo Clinic.
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On brown and black skin, the bump often looks brown or glossy black.
Other signs of BCC are; a flat, scaly patch with a raised edge, a waxy, scar-like lesion, and a dark lesion with a slightly raised, translucent border.