- Maddy Balderson spent years covered in tanning oil and sun-baking
- She has been diagnosed with an aggressive skin cancer for the second time
- ‘I get my skin checked every six months… it’s never been picked up,’ she said
Growing up on the beach, Maddy Balderson spent her youth covered in tanning oil, convinced she was invincible.
But now the Australian beauty entrepreneur has revealed how her skin cancer has come back 10 years after she thought her ordeal was over.
The 38-year-old, who grew up on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula and now lives on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, is recovering from major surgery after doctors discovered her basal cell carcinoma (BCC) had returned in the exact same spot under her jawline.
‘I absolutely did all the wrong things as a teenager,’ she told Daily Mail.
‘Tanning beds when they were still legal and tanning oils. I’d be down at the beach or by the pool literally just slathering and roasting myself in it.’
Despite having very fair skin, and her parent’s warnings for years, Maddy, brushed off the risks.
‘I knew it could have happened to me, but I just kept doing it. [I was] young and naïve,’ Maddy, who now owns fake tan company Luna Bronze, said.
Like thousands of Aussie teens in the 90s and 2000s, Maddy’s life revolved around the beach, and when she could tan easily, she thought she was safe.
‘I could spend a little bit of time in the sun and go very dark brown. I thought maybe that meant I had skin that could handle it,’ she said.
At 22, she backpacked through Europe and Thailand with her best friend where they spent countless days in the sun without any SPF protection or hats.
However, Maddy’s first red flag appeared in 2014, when she was just 26, after her facialist noticed a small little patch, about the size of a pinkie nail, underneath her jawline.
‘It wasn’t a freckle or a mole, just discoloured skin. But it would bleed. I’d wake up in the morning and have blood on my pillow,’ she remembered.
A biopsy quickly confirmed infiltrating basal cell carcinoma, a deeper, more damaging subtype.
After Mohs surgery (a precise surgical technique for removing skin cancer), doctors warned the margins were ‘quite slim,’ but after close monitoring at the Melanoma Institute, she was cleared without needing radiotherapy.
For the next decade, Maddy was diligent – SPF daily, covering up, shade-seeking, and skin checks every six months. She believed the nightmare was behind her.
But this year, the cancer returned, and as if like déjà vu, her beauty therapist mentioned a strange change in her scar during a skin needling treatment.
‘She said, “you’ve got this white shadow around the scar, and it’s bleeding a lot every time I do the needling”.’
‘So she told me to get it checked.’
Her plastic surgeons ordered five more biopsies around the site to measure how far the cancer had spread. The tumour, which began as a tiny dot a decade earlier, had now grown to the size of a 50-cent piece.
Maddy underwent day surgery in November, but because of the size of the tumour, surgeons had to perform a large surgical flap under her chin.
‘It’s kind of like an ice-cream scoop shape,’ she said of her new scar, which has pulled the skin so tight, she currently has limited movement in her neck.
But the toughest blow was still coming, as her post-surgery pathology revealed something far more serious.
Her cancer had transformed into morphoeic basal cell carcinoma, an aggressive form that spreads by burrowing deeper into the skin.
‘They’ve now told me it’s a worse type [of skin cancer] and it’s on my nerves,’ she said.
‘It’s called perineural invasion, [and] it acts a lot more aggressively.’
This subtype is known for its high recurrence rate and potential impact on nerve function, including facial drooping or Bell’s palsy.
Her plastic surgeon has warned she will likely need radiotherapy, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
‘I’m terrified,’ she admitted.
‘I was just driving in the car thinking, “do I have to tint my car windows darker now?” I’m now so scared of the sun.’
‘I get my skin checked every six months… and it’s never been picked up. It could have been one tiny little cell that didn’t get removed 10 years ago, and it’s just done its thing.’
BCCs are the most common skin cancer in Australia, but infiltrating and morphoeic types can be deeply destructive, disfiguring and, in rare cases, life-threatening.
Maddy said her experience proves it can happen to anyone, even those who believe they’re now doing everything right.
‘People think you can just cut it off and be on your way, but they don’t realise how bad the [BCC] stages can be,’ she said.
As she waits for her oncology appointment and continues recovering from surgery, Maddy is urging Australians to take even the smallest skin changes seriously.
‘Check the spot. Wear the SPF. Don’t ignore anything, because I never thought something so tiny could turn into this.’
Read more
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- How did a seemingly harmless ‘single dot’ on a young woman’s chest turn into a terrifying battle with melanoma skin cancer?
- Could Emma Verran’s startling melanoma revelation change how young Aussies approach tanning?
- Could Annelise’s melanoma story be a chilling reminder that sun safety is a must for every beach-loving Aussie?
- Could a hidden cancer warning lurk beneath your glamorous acrylics like it did for this UK mother who discovered pre-cancerous cells?
