She once used sunbeds up to five times a week because she thought her tan ‘made her look healthy’.
But Joanne Cobb’s obsession with having a golden glow has left her facing a possible death sentence.
She has found herself battling nodular melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, and has had to accept that her four young boys could be left without a mother.
The disease spread through her blood into her groin and pelvis and she had to have glands all over her body removed.
Doctors have given her the all-clear for now but say there is a 50 per cent chance the disease will return within five years – and if it does, it will be fatal.
‘I feel like I am living on borrowed time,’ said Mrs Cobb, 28. ‘I worry all the time about what will happen if I die. Missing out on my boys growing up is the thing that devastates me most.
‘The thought of them being left without a mother makes me cry.’
Mrs Cobb, a mother to Jack, ten, Harry, three, and twins Alfie and Archie, 21 months, said she was ‘indescribably angry’ with herself for being what she calls a tanorexic.
I just wish I could turn back the clock,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t ignored the risks I would never have found myself in this position.
‘I try not to think about it, but the reality is that my life will be a lot shorter thanks to skin cancer.’
Mrs Cobb, from Gravesend, Kent, was 15 when she first went on a sunbed and she soon became addicted to having a tan.
Between the ages of 21 and 23, she used sunbeds five times a week. On holidays abroad she would spend hours in the sun with little skin protection.
‘I would definitely describe myself as tanorexic,’ she said. ‘It reached the point where I would feel panicked every time my tan started to fade.’ Days after her wedding to Andrew, 33, in July 2009, she discovered a mole on her leg was a malignant melanoma.
‘I immediately made the connection between the condition and all those years I had spent in the sun,’ she said.
‘I vowed there and then never to go on a sunbed again.’
In April this year Mrs Cobb was told the cancer had spread and she had lymph nodes removed. If the cancer returns, doctors say there will be nothing they can do.
Her husband, who is a restaurant manager, said: ‘I try to stay positive and hope.’
Caroline Cerny, from Cancer Research UK, said: ‘Every time you use a sunbed you damage the DNA in your skin, increasing your risk of developing skin cancer and speeding up the ageing process.’
RELATED ARTICLES
- EVs pollute 1850 times more than Fossil Fuel cars according to new study
- UK Warns that China is Preparing for Total Nuclear War with the West
- Jacob Rothschild Dies At Age 87
- UK Government-Funded Study Found Virtually No Dental Benefit From Fluoridation
- UK Elderly Couple Ordered in a Council Letter to Sell Their House as its Needed to House Migrants
Loading ...
Why blame a sunbed,could be Krypton 85.
It’s so sad that white people like her cannot accept the fact that they are white and beautiful just the way they are. I think something can be done about this phenomena by selective advertising to European men and women that “you don’t have to be african to be beautiful”
Once upon a time white skin was prized in European culture and women stayed out of the sun in order to keep their skin milky white. Now they all want to look like an african. It’s so sad and delusional. Do white people loathe themselves?
This is just as bad as some african women who bleach their skin with toxic chemicals in order to look white. People need to just be themselves. It’s ironic that in China and Japan, women with white skin have been prized for centuries and even so to this day and they do what they can to maintain white complexion that they have, hence no skin cancer and their skin is white almost as much as Europeans.
People need to be themselves whatever they are and realize that whatever the universe gives you, it is the source of your inner power or Te, as the Chinese call it, and it is your Te which makes you unique and gives you power to live in the world. The power to be fully yourself. That’s a great power just to be 100% yourself and not want to be someone else, people should realize that. The universe didn’t make you any better or any worse than someone else and if you are expressing who you truly are you’ll be ok no matter what happens good or bad things will work out for you cause you have the Te (virtue, essence) of who you are inside.
I really hope this young lady beats her cancer and learns to be herself because self will never fail her.