I loved tanning as a teen — now I have ‘brutal’ skin cancer

A woman from Australia claims she has been diagnosed with three different types of skin cancer since 2009, sharing her “brutal” journey on TikTok.

“This is the real face of skin cancer,” Melissa Lewis, 48, declared in a viral clip as she showed off her bright red blistering skin after undergoing carbon dioxide laser photodynamic therapy.

She revealed that her eyes had finally opened after being swollen shut — but were still a bit blurry. She put a cover over her nose so she could wear her glasses.

“Everybody needs to just protect their skin,” Lewis insisted. “A tan is not good for anyone. I wish I had known 30 years ago when we really didn’t know about sun safety.”

The mother-of-four recalled spending hours burning in the sun attempting to get tan as a kid.

“Look after yourselves, everybody,” Lewis advised in the video, which has attracted 2.7 million views since it was posted in February.

Lewis later posted an update to TikTok to show how her skin was faring 10 days after the intense treatment.

It was still slightly pink, but cleared of the peeling.

“It was a brutal week,” she captioned the clip.

“It’s still red, but oh my God. What a difference,” Lewis exclaimed. “But guess what, it’s still there.”

She explained that “the skin cancer is still lurking behind the surface” of her skin and that she still had “quite a few lesions” that needed biopsying, but treatment was showing promising results.

Lewis claims she will need to undergo carbon dioxide laser photodynamic therapy once a year for the rest of her life as it’s “the only way to keep the skin cancer at bay.”

“Protect yourselves. Stay strong. Stay healthy,” she encouraged her viewers.

The Post has reached out to Lewis for comment.

The bespectacled redhead told the Daily Mail her skin cancer never revealed itself through classic symptoms such as a “dodgy looking mole” — but instead appeared as flaky skin or an uneven complexion.

“I had a melanoma, and it didn’t look like anything at all. In fact, it took two dermatologists to diagnose it. They needed to look at my face under a microscope to try to find it,” she explained to the outlet.

She claims dermatologists found lesions on her body from 2009 to 2018; she was later diagnosed with breast cancer, which caused her to take a year off from skin cancer treatments; and she almost died from sepsis after a gynecological procedure gone wrong. 

After a decade of traumatic medical conditions, it’s the skin cancer that still haunts Lewis the most — prompting her to share her journey with others online.

She said doctors discovered basal cell carcinoma on the side of her nose, shoulder and upper chest.

They also reportedly took a biopsy of a suspicious lesion on her forehead that turned out to be Bowen’s disease, an early form of skin cancer that’s also known as squamous cell carcinoma.

Even worse, surgeons removed a bit of melanoma from her ear, which had to be reconstructed.

“It was a total shock because that word is synonymous with cancer — it’s the top level because a melanoma has gone to the deepest layer of the skin and is about to invade,” she explained. 

“I was very lucky because it was caught during the stage 0 phase — it hadn’t yet invaded the bloodstream.”

She says the annual photodynamic therapy treatments help her maintain her health.

Daylight photodynamic therapy is a treatment that involves sunlight, a photosynthesizing agent and heavy sunscreen.

Lewis likens the procedure to “scratching away at the surface of the skin as if with sandpaper” to exfoliate it. The skin feels burnt and peels for several days.

“It’s been a real journey, and my confidence has shaken because your face is how you present yourself to the world,” she admitted.

She wishes she had simply taken better care of her skin as a teenager and worn sunscreen.

“Thinking back now, if I could have a moment to pull my younger self aside I would say — ‘Listen what you’re doing now might be fun, but you’re going to pay for it in the future. And it could cost you your life,’” Lewis said.