Ciara's Skin Cancer Story
“You think skin cancer is the kind of thing that can’t happen to you, but I’m proof that it can. I never thought a little freckle could be something serious.”
When Ciara McGrath, 38, from Dublin noticed a small freckle on the right side of her face that caused an itch, she decided to get it checked it. This was in May 2020, and her GP referred her to a dermatologist in Tallaght Hospital to get it examined.
“They took off the freckle and biopsied it, and they found out it was stage 1a melanoma,” says Ciara. “I remember feeling absolute panic when they told me that. I didn’t know what to think – melanoma had never entered my head until that point.
“I went back for a wide local excision and a lymph node biopsy. I went back to Tallaght Hospital two weeks after that, and they said they’d got it all. I was relieved. I got skin checks for the next few years, and everything was coming back fine.”
In late 2024, Ciara began to experience tiredness that wouldn’t lift, no matter how much sleep she got. As a busy mother-of-three who worked full-time as a carer for people with disabilities, Ciara originally attributed it to her hectic lifestyle as she had blood tests that came back clear. Around Christmas that year, Ciara then began to experience shoulder pain while the tiredness continued.
“The shoulder pain felt like a dull ache. I left it for a while, but it reached a stage where I was taking painkillers every two hours, and I realised the pain wasn’t normal. I went to A&E in Tallaght Hospital and they did an X-ray. They found a mass on the bottom of my right lung."
“My gut told me that it was cancer, I knew it, but I didn’t think it could be melanoma because it wasn’t on my skin and my last skin check was only four months before. I was kept in that night, and they did more tests the next day that revealed the extent of it – I had stage four melanoma in both of my lungs, a 12-centimetre tumour in my liver, some in my chest bone and a lot of lymph node and muscle involvement. It was horrific. It was the most devastating thing I’d ever been told.
“The aim of the treatment is to try to keep me alive as long as possible. I started immunotherapy within ten days of my diagnosis, and they found it was working in some areas of my body, but the cancer was progressing in my lungs.”
Ciara’s medical team found that she had a genetic mutation called BRAF that meant her cancer might be responsive to a specific targeted treatment, which she says has delivered good results.
“In September 2025, I had a scan and it showed there were only nodules left in my lungs, and the tumour in my liver had shrunk to four centimetres. I’ll probably only get nine months to a year on that treatment, and the cancer will most likely progress again, but I hope it works for longer than that."
“I had more scans after Christmas last year, and they came back really good – the tumour in the liver is stable, it hasn’t shrunk but it also hasn’t grown, and the nodules in my lungs aren’t active anymore. I’m now getting targeted radiotherapy on my liver with the hope of keeping it stable for a long time.”
Reflecting on her experience, Ciara says that she wants people to understand the importance of protecting their skin from the sun and to be aware of the risk of using sunbeds, and encourages people to go to their GP if they notice any skin changes.
“I loved the sun when I was younger, I was always out in it and I didn’t wear sunscreen in Ireland because I didn’t think the sun was that strong, but I did when I was abroad,” she says.
“In my early 20s, I used sunbeds, but I wouldn’t say I was a chronic sunbed user. I used mainly used them prior to going on holidays to get a base tan. I think if I knew about the dangers of sunbeds then, I probably would’ve thought twice about using them. Here I am dealing with all of this now
“It was only after my first melanoma diagnosis when I realised how important it is to cover up and protect your skin from the sun, I thought I didn’t need to protect my skin from the sun in Ireland.
“I make sure that my kids are very aware of not lying out in the sun and the importance of wearing their SPF. Before I was diagnosed with melanoma, I would’ve been fairly lenient about it, but now I’m stringent and they always know to put their factor 50 SPF on every day.”
