Woman shares shocking photos to warn against skin cancer

Judy Cloud, a mother of two, has been fighting skin cancer for over 20 years.

The cause of the cancer? Sunburns and occasional visits to tanning salons.

"I was never a 'heavy' user of tanning beds -- once a week for three to four weeks, three or four times a year prior to vacation," Cloud told Buzzfeed News. "It doesn't take much to do a lifetime of damage."

Cloud, who was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1995, has had multiple surgeries to combat the cancer. Her most recent procedure was in September, when she had 23 spots removed from her face, chest, arms and legs. The cost of the surgery was $26,845.87.

"I had to take two weeks off work because I was to spend the two weeks following surgery immobile, lying on a couch during the day with my legs elevated and lying in bed at night with my legs elevated," she wrote on Facebook. "I worried about blood clots and I worried about getting pneumonia, both of which could happen post-surgery with immobility."

Luckily, the majority of Cloud's spots were basal cell carcinoma, not the more deadly form of melanoma.

After her surgery, Cloud, 49, took to social media in an attempt to warn others, especially young people, about the dangers of tanning and sun damage.

"I hear too many people say that they feel better about how they look after they go to a tanning bed or after they bake in the sun for hours on end," she wrote on Facebook. "Look at the pictures. This could be you. Anyone can get skin cancer, even people who have darker skin tones. Skin cancer doesn't discriminate."

During Cloud's September surgery, doctors had to cut into a muscle in her mouth and move a nerve in her head to remove the cancer. She couldn’t move or eat solid foods for weeks after the surgery. Five months later, she still hasn’t regained feeling in her left cheek or in her forehead.

She said her younger self would never have shared photos of herself looking "so injured," but now she's old enough "to know this is needed."

"I see too many young girls and teenagers who are tanned year round, and I know what they're doing to their skin," she told Self magazine. "I just want people to not think it won't happen to them. If it does not show up right away, it could show up down the road, and it's not going to be pretty and it's not going to be fun. People don't need to die for a tan."

“Many people think that skin cancer won’t happen to them, and I wanted to let people know that it could indeed happen to them, and while I can’t go back and undo the damage I did to my skin when I was younger, they can make better choices so they don’t do the damage to their skin,” she told BuzzFeed. “Their future self will thank them.”