Katherine Ryan, 41, fears ‘am I going to die?’ as comedian given fresh health blow after cancer diagnosis
Katherine Ryan has been speaking candidly about a series of frightening health issues recently, and now the comedian has been informed of another health blow.
Ryan, 41, announced in March that she had been diagnosed with skin cancer for the second time after overcoming the illness in her 20s.
Speaking at the time, she said on Katherine Ryan: Telling Everybody Everything: “If you know about melanoma, you’ll know it is a deadly form of skin cancer, it does spread quickly – and I just felt like this mole wasn’t right.
“It’s on my arm… I shared pictures on my social media, I went in (to the doctor) and I wanted the doctor to remove a bigger piece of it and stitch it up in a straight line.
“But even when he looked at it, he was like, ‘It’s not melanoma, totally fine, I’ll do the shave and send it away for histology, and then if it comes back with anything we missed then we’ll do the deeper cut.’
“And even then I was like, ‘Just do the deeper cut, just do it,’ and he was like, ‘Well, it’s half the price for you, you don’t need the deeper cut, let’s just take it and we’ll test it.’ I was like, ‘Alright, fine.'”
Explaining she had only received the news on the day of recording the podcast, Ryan continued: “So he rang me today and it did come back melanoma.
“And it’s early melanoma and he was shocked, he was like, ‘It doesn’t look like melanoma but it is melanoma and you need to come back on Monday.'”
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Katherine Ryan shares health update following surgery after skin cancer diagnosisKatherine Ryan, 41, diagnosed with cancer as comedian delves into health ordeal: ‘Actually really worried!’Katherine Ryan rages ‘what is wrong with men’ as she unleashes furious rant at ‘losers’ who queued for Bonnie Blue event
A week later, Ryan shared that she had completed her second cancer surgery, posting a photo of her arm with a plaster on Instagram.
The comedian captioned the image with the word “Done” alongside a tick and a red heart emoji. However, it was revealed on a separate podcast recently that she had another health ailment to contend with.
Discussing her medical history once again, she went on to share that she had been given a medical age of 77. She also revealed she’d been misdiagnosed with ringworm on her face when she actually had Discoid Lupus Erythematosus (DLE).
“I was originally diagnosed with ringworm on my face, but it was the discoid rash,” she said on the What’s My Age Again? podcast with Dr Chris Wincup and Dr Nicola Conlan.
The hosts gave her a test to find out her medical age, which left her asking, “Am I going to die?” The test revealed the shocking result, but Ryan wasn’t completely disappointed by it.
Despite joking: “Nicola, am I gonna die? Is there anything positive from the data that you collected?” she confessed that she thought the result would be “older” than it was.
Aging expert Conlan assured her: “The positive is, as I always say, that it’s reversible and knowing something about it means you can do something, something about it.”
“It’s not reversible,” Ryan argued, adding: “I have a chronic illness. I’m not going to be doing any yoga with you and your little northern friends. I appreciate that you always try to give some actionable advice, but I lean into being 77.
Ryan was previously diagnosed with stage 2 melanoma in her 20s, which heightened her awareness when she noticed changes in a mole on her arm.
Despite her concerns, she struggled to be taken seriously by medical professionals.
“The doctor was like, ‘I do melanoma on the NHS, it’s all I do, I know all about skin cancer, I’m the man, this is not melanoma, goodbye’,” she recalled.
However, Ryan remained concerned as the mole “kept changing.” Her instincts proved correct when test results confirmed it was indeed melanoma.
She went on to tell listeners: “The only reason that they agreed to remove it was because I went to a fancy, private place in South Kensington, and I paid them a grand.