Christina Mattay, Stage IV

It was 2015, It was cancer week and I looked down into my textbook. There was a very similar looking mole and the word MELANOMA, little did I know from this point on, that word right there would consume my life forever. After class I approached my teacher and pointed to the picture in the book and my arm, a dermatologist appointment was made ASAP. I went and got a biopsy done. The dermatologist immediately referred me to an oncologist and told me she was 99% sure it was melanoma. Countless tests and scans were done, it was found that I had melanoma in my lymph nodes. I needed surgery. Two surgeries later I’m now 20 years old, jobless, dropped out of school, can’t use my arm and am diagnosed with stage 3a metastatic melanoma.

About a year and a half of immunotherapy goes by and I am finally in remission! Finally feeling better and getting back on my feet. I am watched closely for the next 5 years, PET scans and blood work all coming back good. After 5 years the medical field deems you “medically cured”, they stop giving you scans. In the meantime my grandfather was diagnosed with melanoma and refused further treatment. He got extremely ill and the doctors told him he had 6 months to live, he had over 50 brain tumors and tumors throughout his lungs. I was so terrified because he had the same cancer as me. I brought him home on hospice. I was by his side for the rest of his days, he passed in three weeks. It was very tragic. Especially when you have such a personal experience with this cancer. Fast forwarding about a year. I’m in the shower shaving my armpits and I feel a lump. A lump right where I had surgery 6 years earlier, I immediately got sick to my stomach because I already knew the beast was back. Further biopsies and scans were done. 6 years later I now had 5 brain tumors, a tumor in my armpit the size of my heart and multiple tumors in my lungs.

I’m now 27, I’m stage 4 and I’m fighting for my life. This time everything was inoperable, and I was terrified. The only plus was that 6 years later new drugs were available to me. I ended up getting tumor injections, brain radiation and more immunotherapy, but this time something wasn’t right. Over the next few months I was admitted 6 times to the hospital, my health deteriorated drastically. My hair fell out, vitiligo all over my body, I’m now stuck to an oxygen tank and now I have diabetes. I thought I was on the way out, but something inside of me told me I have to fight this for my grandfather. I did everything I possibly could do to live. I am now 28 years old. I’m a little over a year in remission and I am off of oxygen. My white eyelashes and patches of skin, short hair, diabetes and shortness of breath are all just my new normal. I’m just happy to be here and I kicked melanoma’s butt twice.

Christina Mattay
Stage IV Melanoma Survivor
Date of Diagnosis: 07/15/2015
Uniontown, Pennsylvania