A mum has issued a stark warning after a mole turned cancerous while she was pregnant and left her with severe facial scarring.
Megin Davies, 40, was diagnosed with a stage two melanoma last February, over a year after the birth of her daughter, Bella-Reign, 3.
Megin, from Brisbane, Australia, noticed a mole on her cheek had quadrupled in size while she was pregnant, but as a busy mum-of-four, she hadn’t had a chance to get it looked at by a doctor.
When a dentist insisted that Megin should get the mole checked, she was devastated to discover that it had developed into a form of skin cancer.
The business owner, who is also mum to Tiana, 18, Cooper, 14 and Chobi, 7, had surgery to remove the mole and make sure the cancer didn’t spread.
Doctors had to take away 3cm of skin from her nose to her chin, leaving a scar 3cm wide and 12cm long.
(Image: Mercury Press & Media)
Megin says she was devastated when she saw the scarring left behind by the surgery and her daughter, Chobi, was too scared to look at her.
She said: “The doctor warned me that my face would be deformed and he drew a picture to show how big the cut would be and my heart just sank.
“I was in shock and I didn’t know how to react knowing that my face was going to be scarred for the rest of my life.
(Image: Mercury Press & Media)
“When I got out of surgery, I grabbed my phone to look at myself and the scar was three times the size of what I’d expected.
“I almost died on the spot. I was horrified. My seven-year-old didn’t want to come home from her dad’s because she was scared of me and that was heart breaking.
“I spent the first few months syringing smoothies into the side of my mouth because I couldn’t open it with the stitches being so tight and it took a while for me to be able to smile again.”
(Image: Mercury Press & Media)
Megin is speaking out to warn others of the importance of keeping an eye on their moles.
She said: “I had this tiny mole on my cheek all of my life. When I was pregnant, it quadrupled but I thought it was hormones.
“Bella-Reign had a few medical problems when she was born so I was focussing on her rather than myself.”
(Image: Mercury Press & Media)
She added: “I’m not an outdoor person, I don’t sunbathe and even when I was younger I stayed in because I was a gamer.
“It was the pregnancy hormones that accelerated the cancer. It didn’t start growing until I was pregnant.
“I didn’t know that could happen so I was really shocked.
“You don’t have to love the sun to get skin cancer.”
