A young Aussie has issued a cheeky warning after she was diagnosed with melanoma at the age of 20.
Teish Ward, who lives in Melbourne, underwent surgery in 2019 to remove the skin cancer and 11 lymph nodes to cure her of the disease.
Ms Ward has also received chemotherapy and immunotherapy for a year and a half and is now warning others to protect themselves when at the beach with friends.
“You always think it will never happen to you, but it can – and it did to me,” she said Yahoo.
Ms Ward said she spent most of her teenage years at the beach with her friends, “baking in the sun”.
Teish Ward (pictured), who was diagnosed with melanoma at the age of 20, has issued an urgent warning to Australians to stop ‘baking in the sun’
“I also grew up at the beach my whole life, so while I definitely wore a hat and sunscreen, I also tanned and lay in the sun,” she said.
However, the years spent soaking up the sun’s rays took their toll on Mrs Ward’s skin.
It was her older sister Georgia who first noticed a freckle on the then twenty-year-old’s back.
The small lump that had developed on her skin bled every time Mrs. Ward scratched the spot.
She decided to have her doctor take a look at it a few days later and soon received the dreaded news that she had melanoma.
The doctor said Mrs Ward would have to undergo surgery to have the disease removed from her body.
Despite the diagnosis, Mrs Ward was quick to deny the severity of the disease and said she would be fine once surgeons removed the birthmark.
Mrs Ward was admitted to the Alfred Hospital just four days later and the cancerous tissue was removed from her back.
Surgeons also removed 11 lymph nodes (small pieces of tissue that fight infection) that had also become cancerous.
Five lymph nodes were removed from one of Mrs Ward’s armpits and six from the other.
Mrs Ward (pictured) underwent a grueling operation and was given several rounds of chemotherapy after the cancer had progressed
However, after the operation, doctors told her a week later that the cancer had progressed, but they remained convinced that the disease could be completely cured.
“We walked into the room and there was a big team of people standing there and they told us, ‘This is a very unfortunate case (and) it has actually spread. It is stage 3C melanoma,” Ms Ward said.
The advanced diagnosis meant Ms Ward had to undergo chemotherapy and immunotherapy, while having a PET and MRI scan every six months.
Ms Ward finished her chemotherapy in 2020 and decided to help others become more aware of the causes of skin cancer and the harmful effects of exposing their skin to the sun.
Together with Georgia, Ms Ward founded GT Skin in 2021 and launched fake tan products as an alternative to lying in the sun on the beach.
Ms Ward is still recovering from her surgery and will receive final test results from her ongoing treatment in August.
Melanoma is the third most common cancer in Australia; one in seventeen Aussies is diagnosed with the disease.
In 2023 alone, more than 18,200 Aussies were diagnosed with melanoma.
