Jak Howell was just 21 when he was told he had stage three advanced melanoma, with the cancer spreading quickly from a patch of skin on his back to his groin and chest within two months
A sunbed addict given just one year to live after being diagnosed with cancer has warned others that skin cancer is not just “a mole being removed.”
Jak Howell was aged just 21 in June 2021 when he learned he had stage three advanced melanoma. The cancer had spread dramatically from a patch of skin on his back through to his groin and chest in the space of just two months.
At the time, Jak was using sunbeds up to five times a week for 18 minutes – a habit he had from the age of 16. Two surgeries to remove tumours on his lower back and leg were not successful.
He went through a year of immunotherapy and was given the all clear in December 2022. Reflecting on his experience, Jak wants to raise awareness of the “later effects of mental health having cancer”.
The content creator, from Swansea, Wales, said: “It’s kind of surreal. I speak to my friends and say it almost feels like it didn’t happen. When they told me the surgery hadn’t worked and the last [immunotherapy] treatment was a final push, I’d been told if that didn’t work I’d have a year to live.
“No doctor could make sense of how it was so severe at my age. I was asked ‘did you use sunbeds?’.
“I said ‘yes, quite a lot’. Doctors then said ‘we can’t physically put it down to that but it is 99.999 per cent chance that is the reason it’s so severe’ As soon as I knew that I knew that I had to get message out about using sunbeds.”
Jak was at home during lockdown in April 2021 when he discovered a “really itchy” patch of skin on his back which began to bleed. He said: “I emailed my GP just before I left for work because you couldn’t do a face-to-face appointment due to lockdown, and by the time I got to work they had replied and said ‘I don’t want to see you, go straight to the hospital’.
“For me that was immediate alarm bells.” Jak had a biopsy taken at Singleton Hospital, Swansea, and 10 days later results showed it was cancerous.
He said: “At first, I didn’t expect it to be anything seen people with melanoma have it cut off and move on. It snowballed from there and got bigger and bigger.”
Despite receiving the all clear after his immunotherapy treatments were a success, Jak’s mental health declined He said: “Recently more than ever I’ve been trying to push the late effects of mental health having cancer.
“That’s another reason I’d love to push the stopping of using sunbeds. I think for years I’ve tried to tell people ‘don’t use sunbeds’ but I want to push the message now that skin cancer isn’t just a mole being removed, it’s so much more complex than that.
“I always say when they first told me I had the all clear you could have heard a pin drop. I think you build yourself up to not make it that far.
“I think for me it was the most difficult part because my life was lived in hospitals and I knew I was always safe in a hospital, in a sense. Now that I had to just go home, I was on my own again.
“It was the most severe shock to the system I had ever experienced. My mental health declined fast at a pace I didn’t think I’ve ever experienced before.
“I couldn’t cope with what was going on and life by myself. It caused me severe distress, my anxiety I don’t think will ever settle back to a normal level.
“I was able to pull myself out of depressive episodes it put me in, but it was a lot of therapy before that was reached. Men don’t speak out as much, I encourage everyone to speak.
“A problem shared is a problem halved. The biggest problem is you take it on yourself.”