I ignored the painless lump on my hand for 12 years and thought it was nothing. In the end, doctors told me it was a rare cancer with only one devastating way to treat it
- WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
- Mom has had two fingers amputated due to cancer
- She had had a small lump on her hand for 12 years
A single mother had to amputate two fingers after a small lump on her hand was found to be a rare form of cancer.
Gold Coast woman Rosie-May Fisher, 32, had to give up her hairdressing career after being diagnosed with a shock last year.
Ms Fisher, who has a three-year-old son, Bobby, said her job was ‘the only thing I’ve ever really worked and dreamed about’ and that being a single mother was now a challenging task.
“Because he’s his age, it’s hard to dress him — even with two hands,” Fisher shared 7NEWS.
Gold Coast woman Rosie-May Fisher, 32, lost two fingers after being diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2022
Ms. Fisher had her middle and ring fingers amputated after being diagnosed with shock cancer
“I can’t wear him or tie his shoelaces, or tie my own shoelaces, run errands, push a trolley, push a pram.”
Ms Fisher said she first noticed the lump on her left palm in 2010, and it initially seemed ‘soft and painless’.
After not paying much attention to it, Mrs. Fisher inquired about it with a GP about two years later at an unrelated appointment.
A subsequent MRI scan determined it to be an unsuspicious and harmless sebaceous cyst.
Ms Fisher said things started to change after Bobby’s birth in 2020.
“The lump started getting bigger and a little painful, to a point where it would be quite painful if I held my brush a certain way,” she said.
Ms Fisher then went back to the GP and asked to have the ‘annoying and painful’ bump removed.
She had to wait a year to have surgery as it was not deemed urgent and it was eventually removed in October 2022.
But during an appointment to have her bandages repaired a week later, Ms Fisher said the surgeon ‘came in with a very serious look on her face’.
“She told me they did a biopsy on the lump after they removed it and the results came back saying it was a rare cancer,” Fisher said.
Ms Fisher said the shock announcement left her in ‘disbelief’.
The cancer, epithelioid sarcoma, is a rare, slow-growing malignant tumor that usually begins in the superficial tissues of the hand or forearm and for which surgery is the most common form of treatment.
Mrs. Fisher is still recovering from the life-changing ordeal
Ms Fisher was sent for more scans and after seeing a cancer specialist in Brisbane, she received the devastating news that the best way to stop the cancer was to amputate the middle and ring fingers of her left hand.
Ms Fisher said she had struggled to accept the prognosis and had been ‘beside herself’.
She sought a second opinion from a Sydney-based specialist, who told her ‘you have to do it for your son’.
Ms Fisher was told that radiation would not be an effective treatment for the condition, so she finally agreed to have her two fingers amputated in December.
She said she’s “still just trying to find my footing” after the ordeal.
“It changed my life, physically, mentally and emotionally,” she said.
“I don’t have my career. I don’t have nearly as much strength as in my other hand and I hate the way it looks.’
Fisher wants to warn others to get a second opinion and believes an earlier biopsy could have prevented the amputation.
A GoFundMe has been set up to support Ms. Fisher.
“Rosie is the kindest person who would do anything for the people she loves,” the GoFundMe organizers wrote on the page.