3 years of terminal cancer

It is hard to believe that it has been three years since I was told that I had Stage 4 Melanoma – terminal cancer. 

Within a few short months I had gone from a young woman, diagnosed a year prior with Stage 1 Melanoma, to a 22 year old with Stage 3 Melanoma, to finally hearing the worst news possible – I was Stage 4. 

I was 22 years old and had already explored and worked in some of the most isolated places in the world and with the most exciting future ahead of me, to a 22 year old stripped of all my hopes and dreams and left to face my mortality.

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Update (plus exciting news!)

On 24 February 2014 I was given another chance at life when almost all our hope had disappeared. Almost a month earlier, we had found out that I was not responding to my initial treatment as a Stage 4 Melanoma patient – Debrafenib and Trametinib. The cancer had spread so far and so quickly that I was given just 3 months to live.

I was given one last glimmer of hope; hope that I would gain access to a clinical trial that was about to close. The clinical trial was for an immunotherapy treatment now known as Keytruda.

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