A woman has warned sunseekers to be careful in the extreme heat as UK temperatures soar.
Tina Manning, 57, from Luton, says she spent years lying in the sun and getting burnt as a child.
Forty years on, she was horrified to be diagnosed with melanoma back in 2013 after doctors found a tumour in her intestines
While they couldn't pinpoint the exact cause, Tina suspects her years getting sunburnt as a child are to blame.
Now, she wants to raise awareness about the importance of wearing suntan lotion and avoiding sun beds.
Tina, from Luton, UK, said: "I hate this time of year; I much prefer winter when it's colder. When the sun is out, I always cover up in t-shirts, and I always wear SPF 50+.
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"I think a lot of people still don't really realise what the sun is doing to your skin."
Tina revealed that as a child she would lie in the sun for hours.
She said: "I used to lie in the sun until I went red, dry, and uncomfortable, but at the time there was no one telling me not to do that.
"Back in the 80s, that was the thing to do. If you went away on holiday you wanted to come back with a bit of colour, even if that colour was red.
"There was no one telling us that that was dangerous or could cause long term issues, it was just what everyone was doing."
Tina's tumour was discovered after a routine blood test revealed that she has elevated white blood cells.
As a result of this, Tina has been battling skin cancer for the last nine years.
She said: "I had surgery to have it removed and thought that was the end of it.
"Then they test on the tumour and said it was melanoma, which just keeps coming back. Since then, I've had 20 tumours, including one on my brain, and more treatments than I could count.
For four years, Tina had immunotherapy - a treatment to boost your immune system to fight cancerous cells - for four years, it was successful until she developed colitis.
She said: "Before that, I was having different immunotherapy with, I didn’t respond to, to treat a brain tumour.
"There's also been three Cyberknife treatments, all of which have helped reduce brain and neck Mets."
Tina wants to raise awareness about the dangers of sunbathing for hours on end or using tanning beds.
She said: "I just want to raise awareness about dangerous it can people. People always think, it won't happen to me, but that's what I thought, and it did.
"I see so many new patients who have been using sun beds and now they have melanoma, it's so clear that they're part of the problem."
Tina believes the only solution is more legislation.
She said: "At the moment, I could walk down the high street and go into three different tanning places all in one day and they wouldn't know.
"It's been proven that they cause melanoma, yet there's nothing to limit how people use them.
"This is something that people do get addicted too but we just ignore that."
