A mother-of-three has told of her devastation after what she thought was a “muscle tear” in her shoulder turned out to be stage four cancer.
The first sign that something was wrong came when Claire Turner, 43, tried to pass a croissant to her daughter in the car.
The accountant from Didcot, Oxfordshire, was in the front passenger seat as her husband Mark Turner, 49, took the family on a weekend away in October last year.
As she turned to pass the cupcake to 11-year-old Annabelle, who was in the back seat, she felt a twinge in her right shoulder.
Doctors initially said it was a torn ligament, but Turner became concerned weeks later when she noticed a slight swelling on the top of her shoulder, the size of a £2 coin.
The growth continued to increase over the next few weeks and became so painful that she couldn’t wear a bra or carry a purse, she says.
After multiple visits to her GP and hospital, Ms Turner underwent a biopsy and scans in January which revealed it was stage four melanoma, a deadly type of skin cancer.
Turner, who used sun loungers in her 20s, now faces an uncertain future and is urging people to avoid harmful UV rays to avoid the same fate.
Mum-of-three Claire Turner, 43, has told of her devastation after what she thought was a “muscle tear” in her shoulder turned out to be stage four cancer.
Doctors initially said it was a torn ligament, but Mrs Turner became concerned weeks later when she noticed a slight swelling on the top of her shoulder, the size of a £2 coin.
There are approximately 17,500 new melanoma diagnoses in the UK each year and the numbers are rising at an alarming rate.
Since the 1990s, rates have doubled in women and nearly tripled in men. Today, more than 2,300 people die from the disease each year in the UK.
Melanoma begins in melanocytes, the cells that produce melanin and give skin color.
However, it can grow quickly and enter the bloodstream, causing tumors to invade other parts of the body; This is known as stage four cancer.
At this stage, treatment becomes complicated: less than half of stage four melanoma patients survive more than five years from diagnosis.
Ms Turner said: “It was a blessing the injury happened.” I don’t know what I did that day but obviously some movement caused that tumor to swell and move.
‘We were at the beach and were going to spend the weekend with friends on the coast. We had a packed breakfast for the kids.
In January, Ms Turner underwent a biopsy and scans which revealed stage four melanoma. The image above shows the scan of Mrs Turner’s shoulder, with the tumor in white.
‘As we were going down, everyone said they were hungry. I passed breakfast, which included a croissant, a banana, and a bottle of water, to one of them and felt like I had torn a muscle.
‘I thought ‘that’s painful’ but then I went on with the day. It was quite painful to carry a bag and that night it was quite painful to lie on it.’
The accountant visited the hospital after the trip and after an x-ray showed nothing serious, doctors told her it appeared to be a torn ligament.
“They gave me painkillers and told me to keep him on a leash and rest for a couple of weeks and he should calm down, and he did,” Mrs Turner recalls.
Weeks later, he noticed that his shoulder seemed slightly swollen while commuting to work.
She said: ‘“I went to the GP and (they told me) that shoulder injuries can take a while to heal.”
The mother booked a GP appointment online and was referred to an orthopedic consultant in December.
After undergoing an MRI, she was referred to an oncology clinic and over Christmas she faced an agonizing wait for a diagnosis, while “expecting the worst.”
Turner, who used sun loungers in her 20s, now faces an uncertain future and is urging people to avoid harmful UV rays to avoid the same fate.
Claire said: ‘At that point it was quite obvious and it was quite substantial swelling in my shoulder. I couldn’t carry a purse or wear a bra.
‘I went into a spiral over Christmas. It was horrible and I expected the worst. “It’s the lowest I’ve felt on the entire trip.”
When she was finally given her diagnosis, Mrs. Turner “was breathless,” she says, adding: “I was taken aback, I was just in shock.”
‘Melanoma is a dodgy mole and it comes from there, that’s what I thought.
‘It starts with a lesion on the skin, you look at it and ignore it, that’s what I thought skin cancer was.
“The doctor said I had a 50/50 chance of coming out on the other side of this.”
In the vast majority of melanoma cases, the “primary tumor” is known, the place on the skin where the cancer started, often a mole.
However, in about three percent of cases it is never found. These patients are only diagnosed after tumors begin to appear throughout the body.
Ms Turner underwent immunotherapy but was forced to stop it in August after it caused inflammation in her pituitary gland and optic nerve.
Experts believe that in these cases the primary tumor, at some point, shrank and disappeared, going unnoticed.
For this reason, doctors say that a mole that gets smaller (not just ones that change and get bigger) is a warning sign that should be examined.
Mrs Turner said: “There was no primer on my skin. The nurse told me: ‘It may be that there was something on the skin and your body healed it.’
“But the cancer cells went so deep that they traveled for months or even years and created other tumors.”
Ms Turner underwent immunotherapy but was forced to stop it in August after it caused inflammation in her pituitary gland and optic nerve.
Despite this, she is philosophical about her situation: “I’m grateful I looked into it.”
‘My nurse told me that 10 years ago with my diagnosis I would be given six to seven months to live. “That was pretty shocking.”
Although scans revealed more tumors in the liver, leg and buttock muscles and around the shoulder, they are now shrinking or have disappeared.
One of the biggest risk factors for skin cancer is exposure to UV rays.
Turner now urges others to take care of their skin to prevent the same thing from happening to them.
She said: “I used sun loungers and got sunburned while trying to get a tan, the tan doesn’t last.” Fake tan doesn’t last and real tan doesn’t last, but which is safer?
