There are some days in your life that you never forget. For Mark Streeting, receiving news in May 2011 that he had a Stage 3 Melanoma on his toe that required immediate treatment was one of those days.
“Just 24 hours earlier I had been planning a scheduled work trip to Abu Dhabi. I also had an appointment with a dermatologist that day regarding a rash on my calf. I had decided to keep this appointment even though my GP had read the results of the biopsy earlier that morning and said that the treatment was straightforward and he could write a prescription. Keeping that appointment with the dermatologist clearly saved my life. He removed the mole from my second toe and said I should not leave for the airport until he spoke to me the following morning.”
“The phone rang at 7.30am the following morning to confirm the diagnosis. Life was turned upside down very quickly. [I was] contemplating a life expectancy of maybe 6 months as opposed to 30 to 40 years.”
“I was obviously late to catch the sun safe messages. As a young boy growing up in the 1960s, getting regularly sunburnt at the beach or at the cricket was the norm. Then came the teenage years where no amount of time was spared to have the best tan you could possibly get. So hardly a surprise that this all caught up with me in a big way in 2011.”
“Stories such as mine can help raise awareness but as a Non-Executive Director of AMRF, we are strongly committed to funding research to support the treatment of melanoma as not everyone is as lucky as me.”
