The unassuming sign on my neck that was deadly cancer – now it’s spread to my brain and I’ve run out of options

A man struck by terminal cancer has urged the public to watch out for subtle changes to the skin, after what he thought was a cyst turned out to be deadly skin cancer that ultimately spread to his brain, lungs and liver.

Stuart Smith, 40, from Essex, first noticed a small lump on the side of his neck in April 2019, while on holiday with his wife in Cornwall.

But the accountant thought little of it, with his wife commenting the growth was ‘a bit different’.

When they got back from their break, Mr Smith visited his GP to ‘make sure it was nothing sinister’.

‘We’d pretty much diagnosed it as a cyst ourselves,’ he said.  

But the doctor voiced concerns and referred him to the local hospital for further testing. 

In August 2019 a biopsy revealed the devastating truth: the ‘cyst’ was in fact stage three melanoma—the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Worryingly, doctors said they believed the growth on his neck had spread from the original cancer site, which they struggled to locate. 

Further tests revealed that the cancer had spread to the glands and muscles in his neck. 

He was rushed in for an urgent operation to attempt to remove as much of the cancer as possible. 

‘It was a massive shock. We met with a surgeon who said they were going to remove the three lymph nodes,’ said Mr Smith’s wife, Lauren, a teaching assistant.

‘We thought it wasn’t a massive surgery but unfortunately when we got in there they realised it had spread into Stu’s sternocleidomastoid muscle [located on either side of the throat].

‘He didn’t know that until he woke up and saw that half his neck was gone. After that initial shock he just had this determination to fight.

‘The operation was successful and we thought we were done.’

However, in 2023, a routine scan revealed that the melanoma had returned and spread even further. 

The disease had now reached his thigh, lungs and liver. 

Ms Smith said: ‘We bought a house and started to get our life back to normal and got our dog.

‘It was approaching three-and-a-half years clear. We thought we were going to hit that five-year clear mark so we started to relax a bit.

‘Stu went for his routine scan and we didn’t think much of it. We underestimated it so much. You just have hope and crack on as normal and life goes on. That was such a shock to us.’

Two years later, in March this year, the situation got even worse—the cancer had spread to his brain, causing him to temporarily losing the ability to speak.

Doctors perfomed life-saving surgery to remove the tumour, but the cancer remains in his body.

Specialists have told the couple there’s nothing more they can do to help him, so they have pinned their hopes on an experimental therapy called TIL that has proved promising for melanoma, in the US. 

Mr Smith has now urged people to always get checked out.

‘Just get checked, even if it’s something small,’ he said. ‘It is scary but it’s worth getting checked. Any changes to your skin. A small lump can be life or death.

‘You just don’t want cancer to win. There are so many other people in this situation as well and it’s devastating.’

New or changing moles, a dark area under the nail or a hard lump under the skin are just some of the symptoms of melanoma.

Up to 3,000 people in the UK die from the disease each year, and about 17,500 new diagnoses, making it the fifth most common cancer in the country.