Comedian Katherine Ryan reveals she has skin cancer for second time - after doctor first told her she was 'healthy'
21 March 2025, 15:05
Katherine Ryan has revealed she has skin cancer for the second time, over 20 years since she was first diagnosed.
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The Canadian comedian, based in the UK, made the revelation on her podcast - while telling listeners to listen to their body after a doctor initially said there was no problem with a mole on her arm.
Ryan, 41, said: "I've had a mole on my arm - that I told you about last week - removed.
"The only reason that they agreed to remove it was because I went to a fancy private place in South Kensington and I paid them a grand.
"I don't know if on the NHS they ever would have removed this mole."
Speaking on her Telling Everybody Everything podcast, she said that even with a private doctor she had problems getting the right diagnosis.
Katherine recalled: "He gave me the news that I wanted! I think it's really easy to take a diagnosis of you're healthy and walk away, you go ''great I'm healthy'' and you don't think about it again because that is the easiest news.
"But the mole kept changing - I know a lot about melanoma, I had a melanoma as a very young woman, stage two on my leg - and I've spoken about that before.
"Even that didn't look traditionally like melanoma to me, fair enough it had some discolouration and asymmetry and a bit of black and red. It was a flat mole, not that bad and not that big, but it was stage two melanoma so that was bad.
"I had to have full general anaesthetic and surgery [on] a golf-ball size of my leg because - if you know about melanoma, you know it's a deadly form of skin cancer and it spreads quickly."
She added: "I just felt like this mole wasn't right. It's on my arm, I showed pictures of it on social media...
"I went in and I wanted the doctor to remove a bigger piece of it and stitch it up in a straight line.
"But even when he looked at it, he was like ''not melanoma, totally fine, I will do the shave and send it away for histology and if there's any borders that we missed, then we will do the deeper cut''.'
Ryan went on: "It just feels crazy to me, like what could have happened if I hadn't been my own advocate - and I will continue to be my own advocate.
"If I hadn't pushed, if I had taken that good answer the first time and walked away. Then I would have had melanoma just growing and spreading in my arm and I would say 'oh no the doctor says it's fine, it's fine' and God knows how far that would have gone."
Ryan was first diagnosed with stage 2 skin cancer in 2004.
She was born and raised in Canada but moved to the UK in her early twenties to pursue a career in comedy.
Ryan has three children, two with her current partner and one from an earlier relationship.
She also suffers from lupus, a chronic autoimmune condition. Symptoms first began for her in 2007.
