A mum was left with a hole in her face after a skin cancer scare over a beauty spot.
Jackie Hall spotted the tiny freckle on her jaw in 2020 after her sister Chantelle Hopson thought it was splash of hair dye.
The mark turned black and itchy but she could not get an appointment with her doctor during lockdown.
She forgot about it for a while until it began to be annoying her again
The 41-year-old mum-of-three was referred to a specialist dermatologist who took away the 8mm mole which she then found out was stage one melanoma.
GrimsbyLive reports Jackie credits Chantelle with 'saving her life' as her skin cancer was caught in the nick of time.
The cancer could have spread to her lymph nodes and even other parts of her body.
A former travel consultant, she used to jet off on four beach holidays a year and would sunbathe from 'sunrise to sunset' to get the best tan possible - but has vowed to never take such risks again.
Jackie is due to have another surgery in the next few weeks to prevent the melanoma returning there for good, which is likely to leave her with a wound double the size of the original one.
Photos reveal her 'tiny beauty spot' and how it changed into a 'horrible black mole' which left her with five stitches and a 'dent' on her jawline.
Jackie said: "I didn't like looking at anybody face on because you could see that it looked like I'd had a big chunk taken out of one side of my jaw.
"It's almost the size of a baby's mouth, to me it just looks as if a baby's bitten me or a mini shark or just something, it just looks like a bite mark.
"I'd prefer to be left with a large scar rather than the alternative of what it could have been, so I class myself as very lucky.
"To be honest, I wasn't thinking about me in the whole process, I was immediately just thinking of my children.
"I suffer with anxiety anyway, so each night I've been sitting there thinking the worst about it spreading to other parts of my body, because I was warned that it could go into lymph nodes and if it does, there's a possibility that it can spread anywhere.
"So I was panicking thinking the worst and about 'oh my God, how are my children going to be?' That's why I feel so lucky, it's only a scar on my face and I can live with that."
Since her ordeal she's been too fearful to spend time in the sun and has been plastering factor 50 on her kids Max, ten, George, nine, and Hope, seven, every day before school.
Jackie said: "Just before lockdown my younger sister was visiting me and she pointed out this mark on my jawline and she thought it was actually hair dye and said 'have you dyed your hair?'.
"I told her I hadn't and she said 'you've got a real funny old brown mark on your face there' so I looked in the mirror and it was a mole.
"And because I've got a couple of them, I just thought it had always been there and took no notice of it really.
"But then during lockdown I noticed it was getting darker, it was almost black and then it started to itch. But I just couldn't get into the doctors because no-one could and I forgot about it to be honest.
"But then four weeks ago it became itchy again and I thought I'd better get it checked out so went to the doctors who made an urgent referral within two weeks to the dermatologist.
"They were concerned about it and took the whole mole out there and then, which shocked me a little bit because I wasn't expecting that."
Jackie received the results of the procedure last week and was told that it was stage one malignant melanoma.
She said: "It was the second best news I could have had - the first best would have been it was nothing and then the second best would be it's only stage one.
"Curiosity got the better of me and I went through all of my photographs from a long time ago and I came across a photo of me and noticed that I had a mark on my jaw, but it was only a freckle.
It wasn't until I looked back through all of my photos I could see how big and quickly it had grown from a little beauty spot into this horrible black mole.
"They told me that it could have been sun damage and when I was younger - I used to work for a travel agency firm, so I was off on four holidays a year.
"When I was younger, a tan was the only thing I'd want so I used to use the lowest factors that I could. I was a bit of a tan addict.
"For me, it's always been about a beach holiday, relaxing in the sun for as long as possible, from sunrise to sunset to be honest, I was terrible.
"To be honest, I didn't ever think about skin cancer whatsoever, it was just one of those things that I didn't hear in young people really, I thought it was always happening to the older people, it never crossed my mind."
Jackie is having another procedure in a few weeks to remove up to another centimetre of tissue either side of the existing site, which will be sent away to ensure the margins are clear of any cancerous cells.
