Champ’s cancer ordeal
OLYMPIC gold medallist Cate Campbell has opened up about the terrifying day she found out she had melanoma, a lifechanging moment that’s sparked her efforts in awareness and research.
She’s joined the chorus calling on social media influencers to take more social responsibility to drive down skin cancers and stop promoting a harmful “Kardashian effect”.
Speaking at the National Press Club alongside the Melanoma Institute’s co-medical directors on Wednesday, the champion swimmer recalled the moment in 2018 her dermatologist found a mole she had almost failed to flag.
Campbell never would have had it checked if not for noticing a new scar on a friend’s arm while having brunch just a few days earlier.
She said he had told her: “If I left it even for a few months, I could have lost an arm”.
Campbell booked her skin check the same day.
“When the phone rang, (the doctor said) ‘I have good news and bad news. The mole has come back, and it’s come back as a melanoma’,” Campbell said.
“I felt the air leave my lungs. Even I, with my limited knowledge of the medical world, knows what that means – cancer. My mind began to spin out of control … Would I be a Paralympic swimmer?
“(Then the doctor said) ‘The good news is, we caught it early. It’s stage 1’. I was booked in for surgery the next day.”
Campbell said since joining the Melanoma Institute of Australia, she had come to understand how “lucky” she was.
“I have met parents who lost children, people who have lost their partners, young children who have lost their parents and whole communities torn apart,” she said.