Mum’s warning after ‘tiny wart’ she tried to treat with chemist ‘dry ice’ was actually skin cancer

A mum-of-two has issued an urgent warning ahead of summer after a tiny wart she discovered on her arm turned out to be skin cancer.

Jody Allen, 47, from Gympie in Queensland, said there is no history of skin cancer in her family and she is ‘super militant’ about getting her skin checked every 12 months as she has a pale complexion.

So she was horrified when the ‘tiny wart’ she tried to treat herself with chemist dry ice turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma (BCC).

‘I first noticed the wart about three months ago,’ Jody told FEMAIL. 

‘It was teeny tiny, but gross, so I thought I needed to treat it.’ 

Jody tried to treat what looked like a ‘tiny wart’ (left) with dry ice from the chemist, but then had her annual skin check and discovered it was a BCC that needed to be cut out (right)

Initially, she bought some dry ice wart remover from the chemist and tried to treat it herself.

But when she managed to give herself dry ice burns and a ’20 centimetre round red raging scar’, she thought it was time to go for her skin check.

‘I got my doctor to look at it and he didn’t like the look of it, so he ordered a punch biopsy,’ she said.

‘It turned out I had a little BCC skin cancer that needed to be cut out.’

The mum-of-two said the ‘moral’ of her story is that everyone needs to go and ‘get checked every year’, and she shared her warning on Facebook (pictured with her husband)

The mum-of-two said the ‘moral’ of her story is that everyone needs to go and ‘get checked every year’.

‘I always thought BCCs were red and scaly, not warts, and I have never been sunburnt in my life, but I still had one,’ Jody said.

‘But I couldn’t believe how much they needed to take out for something so small. Don’t put things off for your health, it really is the most important thing.’

Jody (pictured) said she has never had any form of skin cancer before, and has never even been burnt as she has incredibly pale skin

Jody shared her story on Facebook and urged her followers to go and get checked. 

‘I am a former beauty therapist, this is not a joke, This is, life saving information. Thank you,’ one woman commented.

‘You can never be too careful with all of this,’ another added. 

There are three main types of skin cancer: melanoma (including nodular melanoma), basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. 

The most common and the least dangerous of these is a BCC, which is often red, pale or peachy in colour and appears as a lump or dry, scaly area.

It grows slowly, usually on areas that are often exposed to the sun.