The Labour MP Chris Bryant is having immunotherapy after skin cancer was detected in his lung, he has said. The shadow creative industries minister said he had “every hope” of being successfully treated.
He received treatment for a melanoma found on the back of his head five years ago and the cancer in his lung was found during one of the regular scans he has had to have since then. The Labour frontbencher urged people to take skin cancer seriously and take precautions by covering up and using high-factor sun cream.
“Just over five years ago, my husband spotted an odd looking mole on the back of my head and I decided to take it to the doctor just to have it checked out. And thank goodness I did, because it turned out to be a melanoma, a particularly vicious form of skin cancer, and a late one at that – stage 3B,” the MP for Rhondda said.
He was given only a 40% chance of living a year, but surgery and targeted therapy “dramatically improved” the outlook. Regular scans every six months followed and he had been cancer-free until he was told in January this year, on his 62nd birthday, that something had been found in his right lung.
In a video posted to social media, Bryant said: “Two weeks later, I was in the hospital bed, they put a robot in my lung, they cut a little bit out and it did turn out indeed to be a melanoma in my lung – not lung cancer, but skin cancer in my lung.
“Now, in years gone by that might have been a death sentence, but thanks to immunotherapy, which I’m now on, my prognosis, my chances of being completely cancer-free in 10, 15 years’ time, are really, really good.”
Some personal news. pic.twitter.com/pUZlxkF3Gc
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) May 13, 2024
He said the immunotherapy was “tough” but “I have every hope of being completely cancer-free for the rest of my life”. Bryant urged people: “If you’re in doubt about a mole, get it checked out.”
Speaking about his melanoma diagnosis in 2019, Bryant said: “It feels like being punched in the stomach and I know I’m nobody special. Hundreds and hundreds of people go through this all the time. You know, there’ll be people having this exactly today.”
He said he had been moved by how colleagues in parliament rallied around him. “I know people think politics at the moment is really nasty, but Tory MPs, Lib Dem MPs, Nationalists have been absolutely gorgeous with me.”
