Mother delayed life-saving operation with skin cancer growing on face so she could give birth to son safely

‘If I'd left it any longer it could have gone into my eyebrow or hairline,’ Rachael Rollisson says

Rachael Rollisson and her son James (Kennedy News and Media)

A first-time mother delayed having skin cancer surgery on her face so she could give both to her son safely.

Rachael Rollisson, 32, is urging people to get their skin checked, after a mark on her forehead which she “didn’t think much of” for years left her requiring surgery.

A 20-time British skipping champion, Ms Rollisson said she first noticed the mark in 2015 because it stayed white while the rest of her face became red during exercise.

While she initially believed it to be a birthmark, it became “more prominent” during her pregnancy – even when not exercising – and appeared to grow larger.

Upon seeking medical advice from her local GP last February, Ms Rollisson was diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, the most common type of skin cancer, after being referred to a dermatologist at Kidderminster Hospital in May.

But she chose to wait until after she had given birth to have surgery, which allowed the cancer to spread, resulting in a larger area of skin having to be removed in surgery.

“I had this test where they basically take a section of it out like a hole punch and test it and the results came back that it was low grade skin cancer,” said Ms Rollisson, who lives in Redditch, Worcestershire.

Rachael, from Redditch, Worcestershire, had Cohs surgery to remove cancerous skin cells (Kennedy News and Media)

“I knew it could just keep spreading and growing and I just wanted to get it out but being pregnant I didn't want to cause any issues with that.

"After finding out what it was and having to wait to get it removed, it was playing on my mind quite a bit.

“While I had to wait to have the surgery I was worrying about it spreading – I'd already had it for a few years and I just kept thinking, ‘how much bigger is it going to get in that time?’ I knew the bigger the area was, the bigger the scar would be and it was already quite a big area.

“If I'd left it any longer it could have gone into my eyebrow or hairline which isn't nice to think. But it was definitely worth it to have my baby here and healthy and both of us are okay now.”

With the NHS waiting time for an operation stretching up to two years, Ms Rollisson chose to privately seek Mohs surgery, during which a specialist cuts away progressive layers of skin and examines them for cancer cells until they believe they have reached layers of healthy skin.

Four months after she and her husband Adam, 33, welcomed their baby James, she had surgery at Solihull Hospital, on 15 January.

“I was fully awake for the surgery and that was the scariest thing,” Ms Rollisson said.

Describing the local anaesthetic injections in her head as “probably the most painful part”, she added: “They cut the skin away and take it away for a few hours to test it and make sure they've got all of it.

“They got it all in one go the first time so I was quite lucky and then I went back in for an hour and a half to have it sewn back up.

“That was probably the worst bit because it was a lot of pulling and tugging of the skin, which wasn't nice at all. The feeling of the skin being pulled over is going to haunt me.

“They allowed me to take a picture of the hole left by the section they took out before they sewed it back up again so that was quite scary seeing that.

“I didn't think it would be that big of a surgery so when I came out of the surgery I was quite upset because the scar was so big but I'm just relieved I'm in the clear now."

Ms Rollisson said her cancer diagnosis came as a shock as she was always careful to apply sun cream and does not typically sit in the sun.

“I'm not really a sun-worshipper but I do tan really easily,” she said. “I wasn't in the sun often at all, not enough to expect to have something like this anyway.

“It's scary because it shows that it really can happen to anyone, even if you're not a sun-worshipper.

“I've always been quite careful with sun cream, but I'll definitely be even more careful now, especially with the baby.

“I would just advise people to get anything different on their skin checked out definitely.”

Basal cell carcinomas would be expected to grow by around one millimetre in a three-month period and are rarely life-threatening, according to Dr Howard Stevens.

“So treatment options can be reasonably delayed for patient choice,” Dr Stevens, a London-based dermatologist with the Skin Care Network, told The Independent.

Pointing to the fact that “many NHS waiting lists currently for mohs surgery are three to six months”, Dr Stevens suggested wait of around three months for elective care is “perfectly acceptable in view of the small risks associated with any minor local anaesthetic surgical procedure during pregnancy”.

“Any decision would have to be viewed in light of the site and growth of the tumour in a particular case,” Dr Stevens said.

Additional reporting by Kennedy News and Media