It was too late for Nicholas Smithson’s hairdresser to spot a suspicious mole on his neck; the 38-year-old now has only six months to live.
The boilermaker from Rockhampton, Queensland, claimed his hairdresser advised him to get the mole examined.
When he consulted physicians, they assured him that he had “nothing to worry about.”
In fact, the tradie told The Courier Mail that after noting the tumor had quadrupled in size, he went to two physicians in 11 days, only to be ignored.
Nicholas went to consult a skin expert, who promptly collected a biopsy.
The development was diagnosed as a nodular melanoma, and it had migrated beyond the darkened mole to his lymph nodes.
After discovering the cancer, physicians told him the “worst case scenario,” which stunned him.
He recalls saying to his partner, he is going to die. They went to his place and simply wept and gazed at the blank wall.
He was rushed to Brisbane for a bilateral neck dissection, a 10-hour procedure to eliminate lymph nodes in his neck.
He saw another growth behind his ear eleven days later.
A PET scan revealed that he was cancerous and that no therapy would result in a recovery.
Doctors told him six months to live in August.
It’s like in movies when individuals get horrible news; they immediately detach, he explained.
He confesses to phoning random pals for consolation and even asked the local funeral director if there was evidence of an afterlife.
Nicholas has always desired to travel, so his friends have set up a GoFundMe page to help him “do some living” before he passes away.
They earned $17,000 after setting a $5000 aim to assist the boiler manufacturer ‘check some items off his bucket list.’
According to Healthline, nodular melanomas can spread to key organs in three months.
