By shooing her dog with her foot – and breaking a bone in the process – Alannah Hill may have saved her life. Instead of kicking the air, she thumped her toe into a heavy Victorian skirting board. When she went to get the throbbing digit mended, her doctor frowned at the brown speck on top of it and ordered a biopsy.
Patient Stories
Monash University scholarship named in honour of late Nick Auden
AMY Auden misses her husband Nick every day.But with three young children, and as the go-to person for comment on melanoma and compassionate use of drugs, she knows she has to get on with life.
Amy’s late husband Nick was the man at the centre of the heartbreaking Save Locky’s Dad campaign, which pushed for pharmaceutical companies to allow people with late-stage melanoma to have access to breakthrough medication.
NSW bans the commercial use of solariums
Sara Cuneo felt much more confident with a bit of colour. Working long hours at her corporate marketing job in Alexandria, she would often slip into the solarium at lunchtime to work on her tan. On holidays on the Gold Coast with her husband, they would seek out apartments that had sauna and solarium facilities. “Essentially, our holiday was focused around getting a tan", Ms Cuneo said.
Melanoma patient Kathy Gardiner speaks at event to highlight concern over disease
Kathy Gardiner should be planning a wedding with her boyfriend, pursuing a career or relishing in the joys of new motherhood.
Instead the 33-year-old from Yeronga is battling advanced metastatic melanoma, a disease that will kill more than 1500 people this year. Ms Gardiner was first diagnosed at the age of 25 with malignant melanoma in a mole that suddenly appeared on her right forearm.