Dad Warns Sun Worshippers After Tiny Spot on Neck Turns Into Giant Skin Cancer Removal

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From the archives: This story was last updated in November 2019.

A father of two from Perth, Australia, made the decision to get his skin checked after a close friend passed away from skin cancer. It was a decision that might have saved his life.

What ensued in the fall of 2019 was a journey that culminated in Ryan Glossop, 37, losing a huge area of skin from his neck and back in order to remove a deadly melanoma. Having recovered from the surgery and looking to the future, the dad is now issuing a warning to sun worshippers everywhere.

In November 2018, a small mole on the back of Ryan’s neck was diagnosed as cancerous. After two surgeries, Ryan still hadn’t received the all clear.

“Each and every time his marker came back [abnormal] and being told they needed to remove more, I felt sick,” Ryan’s wife, Fallon, told Fox News. “I can’t really explain that feeling, but it’s something I would never want to go through again.”

Fallon took to Facebook on Oct. 3, 2019, to regale her family’s ordeal. “Ryan’s boundaries kept coming back abnormal, which was then found to be a skin condition called nevus spilus (a light brown skin lesion),” she explained. “It’s very rare for it to transition into melanoma, but in his case it did.”

“The thing is, with any skin cancer,” Fallon continued, “not only do they remove the affected area of skin, but they also take a boundary around it.”

Back in May, Ryan’s final surgery involved the removal of a huge section of skin from his back measuring 3 inches wide and 15 inches long. “A large area of skin from his neck and back needed to be taken,” Fallon explained. “Ryan had a skin graft, removing skin from both legs to cover sections on his neck and back.”

“Going through that was scary at first,” Ryan himself recalled, speaking to Yahoo News Australia. “But then once they said, ‘If we can get this skin graft done, we think you’ll be in the clear,‘ it was more dealing with the fact I’d have fairly significant scars.”

Forty biopsies and four surgeries after his original diagnosis, Ryan bears the scars, but the melanoma is finally a thing of the past.

Ryan recalled noticing an increase in the number of freckles and sun spots on his skin as he entered his thirties. “It wasn’t until I went into the mining industry for work that the concept of skin checks was thrown around quite a lot,” he said. It came in the nick of time.

The husband and father now hopes that his experience will encourage others to move past misconceptions regarding melanoma. As such, he has chosen to share the somewhat graphic photos of his final skin-removal procedure on social media. Not all suspect sun spots are easily removed.

According to the Daily Mail, the Glossops have heeded their own advice by having their children, aged 8 and 5, preemptively screened for potential skin abnormalities.

“This whole experience has been hugely challenging for all of us,” said Fallon, “but if anything good is to come out of this, it is that we now want to help raise more awareness of skin cancer.”

What Is Melanoma?

Melanoma can occur when skin cells are damaged during exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light, which is present in the rays of the sun and the light used on tanning beds.

Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the United States according to the American Academy of Dermatology. More than 1 million residents of the United States are living with melanoma.

Consider the ABCDE acronym when checking moles and sun spots. Watch for asymmetry, border, color, diameter, and evolution. Body mapping can also be an effective way of monitoring abnormal growths.