Mum who had a one-off sunbed course to avoid being a 'pasty bridesmaid' now has advanced skin cancer

Keen for others to learn from her tragedy, Sarah Brookes is now calling for sunbeds to be banned.

A mum-of-two who had a course of sunbeds as a “one-off” to avoid being a “pasty-faced bridesmaid” has revealed how she now has stage four advanced skin cancer.

Always vigilant about sun safety, Sarah Brookes, 41, of Bradford, West Yorkshire, said when she watched her boys, Morgan, 15, and Mason, 12, out playing, she would slather them with sun cream.

But when the progress support leader – similar to a supply teacher – and mentor for young carers was asked to be a bridesmaid for a friend she does not wish to name, and the bride suggested everyone should have a course of sunbeds to give them a golden glow in the photos of her big day, she agreed.

Married to Autoglass worker Darren, 43, Sarah, who is now campaigning alongside charity Melanoma UK to ban the commercial use of sunbeds, said: “I’d actually always been happy with my pale skin, but I agreed as I didn’t want to upset the bride, who didn’t want pasty-faced bridesmaids.

Sarah as a bridesmaid (PA Real Life/Collect)

“I know I could have refused, but it was about five or six years ago and back then, I’d no idea just how dangerous sunbeds could be. Plus because of a number of allergies to different chemicals I have I didn’t want to have a spray tan in case I flared up.

“I’ve never been a sun worshipper – my parents used to jokingly call me a vampire. Doctors cannot say what caused this, but in my mind, if I hadn’t gone on those sunbeds, I wouldn’t be in this position now.”

Following her 10 three-minute sessions, Sarah forgot all about her sunbed treatments until one day in 2016 when, out-of-the-blue, she was driving along with Morgan when he noticed that the back of her ear was bleeding.

The spot behind Sarah's ear (PA Real Life/Collect)

“His exact words were, ‘Mum, that’s minging,’” she said. “We drove straight to the pharmacy, where they said I had an infected spot.

“I was told to keep an eye on it and go straight to the doctor if it got hot. But it didn’t, so I forgot all about it.”

After that Sarah forgot about the spot again until later that year, when her mum Susan Burness, 68, pointed it out.

This time, however, when she consulted her doctor, she was urgently referred to a dermatologist at St Luke’s Hospital in Bradford.

Sarah during radiotherapy (PA Real Life/Collect)

At the start of September 2016, when she went in for her appointment, she was wheeled straight down to theatre to have a mass behind her ear removed and sent off for testing.

Two weeks later, the results revealed that, tragically, she had stage three malignant melanoma – a type of skin cancer.

“I just remember sitting there reeling, waiting for a cancer nurse to come and tell me what would happen next,” she said. “They told me they’d need to remove part of my ear to check the cancer margins.

Sarah after her neck surgery (PA Real Life/Collect)

“Bizarrely, I remember wondering if I’d still be able to wear earrings. It’s funny the things you think. But I knew that, no matter how it looked afterwards, I had to go ahead with the operation. It was either save my ear or save my life.”

Three weeks later, in October 2016, Sarah went under the knife, also having reconstructive surgery.

She continued: “It almost looks like a jigsaw. They stitched it all together, so it’s ear shaped, but just a lot smaller. I call it my mini ear.”

During the operation, doctors – who are unable to confirm what has caused her cancer – also injected Sarah with a radioactive dye, designed to highlight any further cancer traces evident in her body.

Sarah and Morgan (PA Real Life/Collect)

Worryingly, they revealed the disease had spread to some lymph nodes in her neck.

Once they were removed and sent away for testing, though, a CT scan seemed to show she was in the clear.

“I was practically dancing after that,” recalled Sarah. “I thought that was it. It was over.”

But, around eight weeks later, in December 2016, the lymph node results came back, showing they contained malignant cancer cells.

So, in January 2017, Sarah had an operation known as a neck dissection, where doctors make an incision from the chin to the neck, then up towards the ear.

She continued: “That was absolutely horrendous. I looked like Frankenstein’s monster, all swollen up and covered in stitches.”

“My boys couldn’t even look at me. I’d been unsure about whether to let them see me like that, but they insisted they’d seen worse on YouTube. In fact, I trumped YouTube,” she continued.

“Seeing my own family, unable to look me in the eye, made it all real. Everyone just sat there trying not to cry.

“I wish I’d never had those sunbeds. I believe they are the reason for all of this. Doctors have asked if I ever burnt my ears as a child, but I don’t recall that happening, and neither does my mum.”

Post-surgery, something in Sarah – who believes it is important to be open, but positive, with her children about her battle – flipped and she became determined to educate others on sun safety, using her scar as an educational tool.

Still working in a school at the time, she spoke to children – especially young girls – about her experience.

Sarah and her family (PA Real Life/Collect)

“There’s a lot of pressure on young girls around looks, and for them to look a certain way,” she explained. “The media portray a tan as healthy, when in reality, it’s damaged skin. Whenever it was sunny, I’d make sure to remind people about using lotion and staying in the shade.”

Still juggling treatment with her tireless crusade to educate others, Sarah began an intensive course of radiotherapy in March 2017.

She added: “Nothing I’d been through so far was as bad as that. It was like having sun stroke that got a little worse every day.

“My mouth blistered, and all my taste buds burnt off. My throat blistered too, but I’d also be sick which felt agonising.”

She continued: “The exhaustion was something else. I thought, being a mum, I knew what being tired felt like – but this was like my entire body, apart from my mind, was asleep. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to ring that bell on the ward to mark my treatment being over.”

By August 2017, Sarah started to feel back to herself again, and was looking forward to rebuilding her life. But then, she was suddenly struck by “lightning bolt” headaches.

At first, she was told it was probably an ear infection, caused by the radiotherapy drying and damaging her skin but, unconvinced, she asked her cancer nurse to arrange some scans.

Tragically, at the end of November, an MRI scan detected a tumour in her brain – meaning her cancer was now stage four.

“After that news, I had to give up my driving license in case the tumour caused any seizures,” she said. “I found that loss of independence incredibly hard.

“I’ve been driving since I was 18 and all of a sudden I was robbed of all those little things, like being able to pick the kids up, or nip out to the shops. Now, I have to plan every single outing with so much precision.”

Meeting with a specialist, Sarah decided to go for gamma knife surgery – a pioneering radiation treatment, which uses a focused array of beams to treat brain lesions.

By the time the operation rolled round on 14 December 2017 though, the original tumour had trebled in size, and two more had sprung up.

Still, the procedure appeared to be a success, and doctors were confident they had removed all traces of the tumours.

Two months later, though, the “lightning bolt” headaches returned, and a scan revealed two new tumours had grown.

“That was hard to hear, but I was offered the gamma knife surgery again, and it’d been successful last time, so I thought, ‘At least it’s treatable,’” said Sarah.

“I was put on steroids to help me prepare for the surgery, but I had quite a bad reaction to them. I was so exhausted I could barely walk. I gained around 1.5st in two weeks with it all.”

During her recovery after the second bout of gamma knife surgery, Sarah reached out to the charity Melanoma UK, having previously discovered them through a Facebook support group.

Since then, they have been an invaluable source of emotional, practical and financial support to her in her hour of need.

“They’ve been a lifeline. They helped with things I hadn’t even considered before now,” she said. “Through one of their grants, I was able to get a scooter, which now makes it far easier for me to get around.”

Tragically, Sarah’s fight is far from over as, in April 2018 – the week before she was due to have a second session of immunotherapy – she discovered the cancer had spread to the lining of her brain, meaning her condition is now classed as advanced.

But, despite this, she is determined to stay positive, especially as her body is responding well to the chemotherapy she is currently having.

“My motto is cry tonight, fight tomorrow. And that’s what I’ll do,” she said.

Determined that her suffering won’t be in vain, Sarah has dedicated her time to working with Melanoma UK, backing their campaign to ban the commercial use of sunbeds in the UK.

With skin cancer rates soaring – as shown in a 2015 study by Cancer Research UK, which reported 15,906 new cases, and noted that 86 per cent were preventable – their message is more vital than ever.

A similar ban to the one being proposed was rolled out in Australia in 2013 in a bid to slash the skin cancer death rate there.

Sarah explained: “With the campaign, we aren’t trying to put people out of jobs – we’ll work with them to retrain them in spray tanning. But we don’t want people to die either.

“The amount of unregulated sunbed use is shocking. People can go on for as long as they like, with no warnings displayed. You see warnings on cigarette packets, on alcohol, even before gambling adverts – why aren’t there any in tanning salons?

“It’s hard knowing this disease can be preventable. Avoiding a sunbed can literally save your life. I don’t want anyone else going through this. I’m only 41, and here I am, praying I’ll see my kids grow up.”

She added: “Cancer doesn’t just affect the person is happening to. This has changed the lives of everyone I love. I’m the atom bomb in the centre of it all – but they’re all caught in the explosion.”

Dr Christian Aldridge, Consultant Dermatologist said: “It has been well established previously that natural ultraviolet radiation (UVR) can cause skin cancer. There is now a large body of robust scientific evidence that clearly demonstrates that sunbeds increase your risk of melanoma.

“These findings are also backed up by IARC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, who state that sunbeds provide no positive health benefits. The risks are greater for younger people as using sunbeds for the first time before the age of 35 increases your risk of melanoma by 60 per cent”

To sign the petition, visit petition.parliament.uk/petitions/223903 and to read more information about melanoma visit www.melanomauk.org.uk

LONDON (AP) — Millions of voters in England cast ballots Thursday in an array of local elections, the last big test before a looming U.K. general election that all indicators suggest will see the Labour Party return to power after 14 years in the wilderness.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was barely able to point to any big success for his Conservative Party, confirming that the electoral coalition that gave the party a big win in the 2019 general election has frayed, if not completely dissolved, in the wake of a series of political dramas and the cost of living crisis.

For Labour leader Keir Starmer, the results provided confirmation of what opinion polls have shown for two years — that Labour has recovered from its 2019 low and is on course to win the election comfortably.

Here are five things we learned:

It's possible.

Though the Conservatives lost around half the 1,000 council seats they held, and suffered a huge defeat in the special parliamentary election in Blackpool South, a coastal resort town in the northwest of England, it looks as though Sunak will not face a revolt just yet from anxious lawmakers in his party.

That's largely because the Conservative candidate in the mayoral contest in Tees Valley in the northeast of England hung on, albeit with a much depressed vote. That helped soothe some concerns despite losses elsewhere.

However, the defeat of the Conservative incumbent mayor in the West Midlands could prompt another bout of jitters among lawmakers increasingly concerned about their ability to hold onto their seats in a general election. Sunak is under pressure from different wings of the party to go further right or move to the center.

Overall, the results show that Sunak hasn't improved the Conservatives’ overall position following the damage caused by the actions of his predecessors, Boris Johnson, who was effectively ousted, and then replaced by Liz Truss, whose tenure lasted only 49 days after her economic policies rocked financial markets.

Probably in the fall.

In the U.K., the date of the general election rests in the hands of the prime minister. It has to take place by January, and Sunak has repeatedly said that his “working assumption” was that it would take place in the second half of 2024.

Though that theoretically could take place as soon as July, most Conservative lawmakers have indicated that the best time would be in the fall, when recent tax cuts may register with voters, inflation has fallen further, and interest rates may have been cut — helping to fuel an economic feelgood factor.

Waiting till the fall may also give the government a chance to cut taxes again in another budget. Conservatives will also be hoping that the controversial plan to send some asylum-seekers to Rwanda will have got off the ground and that there is evidence that it is acting as a deterrent for those seeking to make the dangerous crossing in small boats across the English Channel from France to England.

It looks like it.

In historical terms, Labour has a mountain to climb, if it’s going to form the next government. Its performance at the last general election in 2019 was its worst since 1935. Starmer has tried to bring the party back to the center of U.K. politics after the leadership of veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn.

Starmer’s approach has clearly worked if Thursday's results are anything to go by. Labour won control of councils in England that the party hasn’t held for decades, and was successful on a massive swing away from the Conservatives in Blackpool South, which if repeated at the general election would lead to a big majority.

Labour won in areas that voted for Britain’s departure from the European Union in 2016 and where it was crushed by Brexit-backer Johnson, such as Hartlepool in the northeast of England, and Thurrock in southeast England. It also seized control of Rushmoor, a leafy and military-heavy council in the south of England where it had never won, showing that it has a broad base of support.

It’s fair to say that enthusiasm levels are far lower than those that heralded the arrival of Labour's Tony Blair before the 1997 general election.

That may be partly because of the more challenging economic backdrop, but Starmer, formerly a human rights lawyer, lacks the razzmatazz of Blair.

It'll be tough.

One of the contributing factors to Blair’s landslide victory in 1997 came from so-called tactical voting, whereby some voters put aside their political preference and vote for whoever has the best chance of defeating the party they oppose the most. In 1997, that was the Conservatives.

Tactical voting has reemerged and was evident somewhat in Thursday's elections where Conservative candidates lost out to other parties, not just Labour, but also to the centrist Liberal Democrats and also to the Green Party.

The Conservatives may also be outflanked from the right, with Reform U.K. poised to stand candidates across Britain. In Thursday's elections, it was a minimal presence but where the party did stand, it clearly took votes away from Conservative candidates. That was notable in Blackpool South, where the Reform candidate was just shy of usurping the Conservatives into second.

Should Reform, which claims to be tougher on issues such as immigration and on Brexit, do as well in a general election, then it could lead to other parties, notably Labour, defeating Conservatives.

It certainly looks like it.

In some areas with large Muslim populations, such as Blackburn and Oldham in northwest England, Labour candidates appear to have suffered as a result of the leadership’s strongly pro-Israel stance over the conflict in Gaza.

Labour's vote share was clearly impacted, but the effect on its performance in a general election remains unclear, as those seats with a big Muslim population generally have big Labour majorities.

London Mayoral Labour Party candidate Sadiq Khan pats his dog Luna as they pose for the media he arrives to vote in London, Thursday, May 2, 2024. Khan, is seeking re-election, and standing against 12 other candidates for the post of Mayor of London. There are other Mayoral elections in English cities and as well as local council elections. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Britain's Labour leader Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria leave the polling station in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency, after casting their votes in the local and London Mayoral election, in north London, Thursday May 2, 2024. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

Counting begins at the Blackpool South by-election at Blackpool Sports Centre in Blackpool, England, Thursday, May 2, 2024. The by-election was triggered after the resignation of Scott Benton. (Peter Byrne/PA via AP)

Tourists on a cycle tour in wet weather plastic macs, cycle past the Houses of Parliament, in London Friday, May 3, 2024. Britain's governing Conservative Party is suffering heavy losses as local election results pour in Friday, piling pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak ahead of a U.K. general election in which the main opposition Labour Party appears increasingly likely to return to power after 14 years. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Conservative party candidate Lord Ben Houchen, left, with Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak following his re-election as Tees Valley Mayor in Teesside, England, Friday May 3, 2024. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)

Britain's Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer with newly elected East Midlands mayor Claire Ward during a visit to Forest Town Arena in Mansfield, England, Saturday May 4, 2024. (Jacob King/PA via AP)

Britain's Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer, center, and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, celebrate with David Skaith at Northallerton Town Football Club, North Yorkshire, after winning the York and North Yorkshire mayoral election, Friday May 3, 2024. (Owen Humphreys/PA via AP)