I’ve got stage 4 skin cancer – please make sure you get checked

A Fylde coast man is on a mission to raise awareness about the dangers of skin cancer.

And David Uttley, 61, speaks from experience, as he is living under the shadow of Stage 4 skin cancer himself.

The dad-of-one, who lives in Lytham, had his first brush with cancer when a mole on his back, which he’d had for years, suddenly “turned nasty” when he was on holiday in Andalusia, Spain, back in 2013.

The growth had turned cancerous without him knowing but thankfully it was spotted and he had it removed.

But sadly that was not the end of the matter. Again, without him realising, the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and invaded other parts of his body.

Today David has “no spleen, very little pancreas and it’s in my bowel.”

He said: “This is the point. A lot of people still think that skin cancer is not so serious, that you can just have it cut out and you’ll be fine.

“But the thing is, it can bite into the lower levels of your skin and affect other organs, especially if it gets into the lymph nodes, which is like the superhighway of your body.

“Our young people and children need education about it. I cringe when I see young people on social media boasting about how red they are because they’ve been using a sun bed before they went on holiday.

“If only they knew how dangerous it was.”

David believes that the seeds to his problems were sewn long before his sunny holiday in Spain 12 years ago.

He said:  “I was only 15 when I was lying in the sun and I got sunburnt on my back. They say that there is a greater chance of having problems later if you have a bad experience when you’re young.”

David is keen to raise awareness of the dangers, especially for people who have moles.

He said: “If a mole changes, if it becomes more raised, if it changes colour or shape or becomes red and angry, just get it checked out.”

There are around 2,300 melanoma skin cancer deaths in the UK every year but David says many people, especially men, do not do enough to protect their skin from the sun.

David said: “I’m stage 4 and have been advised that my skin cancer has reappeared again. This time it would appear that it’s inoperable as there is more than one “deposit”.

“Other areas of my body also indicated a high “volume uptake” of the radioactive dye that is used to pinpoint sites of interest when using a PET CT scan

“In 2021 I had my spleen and 80% of my pancreas removed. Now, in 2025, the same cancer has metastasised in my bowel. I now need a further two years of immunotherapy to try to save my life.”

David says of his own prognosis: “It’s about fifty-fifty over the next 10 years – but I don’t know which side of fifty.”

Meanwhile, David has been involved in raising money for the dermatology unit at Clifton Hospital, Lytham, and climbed Africa’s mighty mount Kilimanjaro two years ago.

He says “Melanoma UK and Clifton Hospital are now in provisional talks to make decisions about what equipment would be best served to try and ensure early and swift diagnosis of a vast array of different skin cancers.

“I support that. The quicker the diagnosis, the quicker it is to save people going through what I’ve had – and potentially saving lives and funds for the NHS.”

David has his own site in which he has information and useful facts, which can be visited here