A Channel 7 news presenter has shared her frightening story of discovering an aggressive melanoma which doctors could never properly diagnose.
Kirstie Fitzpatrick was just 19-years-old when she noticed a bump form overnight on her elbow, which began growing rapidly.
Speaking to 7Life, she said she was about to move from the regional NSW town of Orange to Sydney to start university when she decided to get the lump removed “for cosmetic reasons” after several doctors told her there was nothing to worry about.
But that was far from the case.
A few weeks after the now 27-year-old made the big move, she received an early morning weekend phone call from her doctor while in her university dorm.
“I couldn’t understand why my doctor was ringing me and I thought it was quite strange,” she told 7Life.
“Suddenly she began throwing out words such as ‘aggressive’, ‘abnormal’ and ‘unusual’.
“Then she said the word ‘cancer’ and that was the first time I ever heard my name and the word cancer in the same sentence — at 19. It was very, very scary.”
As if that news was not enough to process, the doctor said she had an extremely rare form of cancer which couldn’t be categorised.
A devastated Fitzpatrick knew that was the end of university in Sydney. She moved back to Orange to be with family and start her treatment.
“It’s that sense of the unknown, just having no idea what this meant. What this was going to do for my life. What this meant for me,” she told 7Life.
“I was definitely frightened.”
No pathologist could work out exactly what type of melanoma Fitzpatrick had.
Her case progressed to the head of pathology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, where she regularly travelled back and forth to for appointments.
After “quite invasive and major surgery” to remove her lymph nodes and cancerous cells, Fitzpatrick got the good news that the cancer was localised in that area and she was likely to recover fully.
Although, she couldn’t move her arm for six weeks.
“To this day, they still don’t know exactly what it was or what caused it,” she said.
She has reportedly had two further surgeries since then and found 15 to 20 more lesions, moles and bumps, thanks to regular skin checks.
“It has been, and still is, a big part of my life,” she said, adding she never tanned without sunscreen growing up and has no family history of cancer.
“It doesn’t necessarily link it directly to sun exposure,” she said.
During her recovery journey, Fitzpatrick changed her university course from marketing and media to study a Bachelor of Communications in journalism at Bathurst’s Charles Sturt University.
She’d always wanted to study journalism and tell stories, but she’d previously been told by a career advisor that the career was risky and jobs were scarce.
Her health scare gave her the motivation she needed to chase her dream job.
“If this hadn’t have happened to me, I wouldn’t be a journalist,” she said of her cancer diagnosis.
While working at 7 News Canberra, Fitzpatrick also became an ambassador for the Skin Cancer College Australasia, where she spreads the important message of what cancer can look like and how it does not discriminate.
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She warned everyone to check their skin regularly for any change, from the obvious places of arms and legs to more obscure spots like in between toes and under fingernails.
Describing what to look out for, she told 7Life: “Anything that might be sore, scaly, bleeding, tender, changing in shape, size or colour. Is it abnormal? Does it feel different?”
“If you do notice something that’s different, find an accredited skin cancer professional so they can do a full body skin check and make sure there’s nothing of concern.”
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