23 yr old Fighting Stage 4 Melanoma Cancer

Well, it all started when I was 16 years old. I noticed that a mole on my right forearm was peeling. Due to my strong family history of having Melanoma, I decided to get it checked out. Consequently, I had surgery to remove it then when the results came back, it was positive for Melanoma so had to go back in and have a wider excision done taking more of a margin to ensure that all the Melanoma was removed so that it would not spread throughout my body. This all happened just before my high school exams. This operation was successful.

I continued to have regular check up’s with a Melanoma specialist and whenever suspicious looking moles were discovered or moles had changed, these were taken out.

It wasn’t until March 2014 when a mole had changed on my back where my tattoo is that things started to get more serious. This mole was taken out and this came back as a very aggressive melanoma. A wider excision was then done in April 2014. This surgery destroyed one of the letters of my tattoo. (Paterson became Pate son) Haha.

The surgeons then wanted to check to make sure that the melanoma had not spread into my lymph nodes, so a biopsy of my neck nodes called a sentinel biopsy was done. Unfortunately this was also positive for melanoma so I then had to undergo surgery again,3 days after my 21st to have all of the nodes in my neck removed.

A year later, just after my 22nd birthday, and a day after celebrating my graduation of attaining my Bachelor in Architecture, I underwent surgery again to have all of the lymph nodes removed from under my arm as I had noticed a lump in my armpit the size of a Jaffa. (Great timing!) 32 nodes were removed, and 2 of these were positive for melanoma.

I was now studying to get my Masters in Architecture and was slowly recovering from the nodal surgery. I was also slowly getting back to the gym, something that I was passionate about before I got sick. I was trying to catch up during the semester holidays on all the assignments that I had missed out on. I was one assignment short of catching up to my class mates when I started getting headaches and having episodes of emotional extremes, very happy one minute, then down the next. I could also hear voices in my head and had feelings of ‘déjà vu’. I could not work out where the voices were coming from but put it down to the stress of trying to catch up with my Uni work. (These episodes I now know were aura seizures) These episodes continued for 3 weeks when they started to get more sinister. I started to lose my peripheral vision, my hearing was distorted and I had trouble making sentences. After 2 of these episodes it was time to head to hospital as it was starting to freak me out!

After undergoing scans the same day, I was told that I had a golf ball size mass in my left temporal lobe which was more than likely to be secondary melanoma.

After quite a few delays, I finally underwent brain surgery and had this tumour removed on 2nd September 2015 and metastatic melanoma was confirmed.

I came through the surgery fine and was recovering well.

While recovering from this surgery, they also found a melanoma tumour in the muscle just below my buttock which I also had to undergo surgery for. (Talk about a pain in the ass!)

I was off the steroids but was taking anti-seizure medication and I was coming along nicely with no sign of any seizures. That was until 5 weeks later when I started having headaches and a drooping eye. I was about to start radiation on my brain and had already had a mask made which bolts me to the bed while they blast radiation rays to my brain.

Once again I headed to my GP and to hospital but was told it was probably just the healing process, had a simple scan and took their word for it that things were fine. That was until I started having those ‘aura seizures’ again so once again I went back to hospital. I had to then push for a ‘contrast CT scan’ which shows up tumours.

The result of this was that I had ANOTHER tumour in my brain in the left temporal lobe, basically in the same spot as last time although this one was bigger. It had grown from nothing to bigger than a golf ball in 6 weeks!

I underwent brain surgery again, on 16th October 2015, this time I only had 22 staples instead of the 33 I got last time. I still have titanium plates holding my skull together which will remain there.

So, second brain surgery was over and before being discharged from hospital to go home they did another contrast CT scan and an MRI. The news was not good. They broke the news to me that they had found 4 more tumours, this time in my lungs. 3 in the left lung and 1 in the right lung, ranging in size from 1mm to 5mm. Not what we all wanted to hear is putting it mildly!

After having my radiation mask realigned, I am now lined up to have radiation in the next few weeks on my brain for post surgery treatment.

I also have an appointment with a medical oncologist shortly, to discuss treatment options for my lung tumours and to deal with anything else that may be lingering in my body. This will more than likely be drug treatment of some kind. There are a couple of drugs available in NZ but are very expensive. There is also a new drug which has come out of Australia and is being called the miracle drug as it shrinks melanoma tumours. This drug is not yet funded in NZ and the cost for this is astronomical.

I am determined to fight this horrible disease so would love the chance to be able to afford drug therapy.

Jeffrey Paterson (aka.Patt)