Heartbroken Mom Warns Others After 18-Year-Old Daughter Dies of Skin Cancer
Freja Nicholson lost her life to melanoma at just 18 years old.
Although the American Cancer Society warns that melanoma is one of the most common cancers in young adults, we are still surprised to hear of cases affecting those under the age of 30. But Jennifer Nicholson from Leeds in the U.K. wants people to know that it can happen to you. Her daughter, Freja, passed away from skin cancer last November at the age of 18.
She says fair-skinned Freja frequently spent hot British summers outside. “There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t wish I could go back and just take five minutes to put sun cream on her delicate young skin when I mistakenly thought there was no danger,” Jennifer told the Mirror.
Nicholson spotted a mole on her daughter’s back four years before she died, and it grew from small and brown to lumpy and black. Doctors cut out the mole and did a biopsy on it, but the mole tested negative for cancer. A couple of years later, when Freja was getting pounding headaches, doctors discovered a new lump on her arm. It measured five centimeters, extending under the skin. It was melanoma.
The cancer spread to Freja’s brain, as a scan revealed a stage 3 tumor and a poor prognosis. Doctors removed the tumor, but the cancer returned in the brain, breast, arm, and lung. Even while Freja was ill, her mother recalled that she was in good spirits. She helped raise more than $10,000 for the Teenage Cancer Trust before passing away in late 2015.
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