Labor MP Chris Bryant is receiving immunotherapy after skin cancer was discovered in his lung, he said. The shadow creative industries minister said he had “every hope” of a successful treatment.
He was treated for melanoma on the back of his head five years ago and the cancer in his lung was discovered during one of the regular scans he has had since. The Labor frontbencher urged people to take skin cancer seriously and take precautions by covering up and using high factor sunscreen.
“A little over five years ago my husband noticed a strange looking mole on the back of my head and I decided to take it to the doctor to have it examined. And thank goodness I did, because it turned out to be melanoma, a particularly vicious form of skin cancer, and a late form – stage 3B,” said the MP for Rhondda.
He was given only a 40% chance of living another year, but surgery and targeted therapy improved the outlook ‘dramatically’. Regular scans every six months followed and he was cancer-free until January this year, on his 62nd birthday, when he was told something had been found in his right lung.
In a video on social media, Bryant said: “Two weeks later I was in the hospital bed, they put a robot in my lung, they cut out a little piece and it turned out to be indeed a melanoma in my lung. – not lung cancer, but skin cancer in my lung.
“In the past that might have been a death sentence, but thanks to the immunotherapy that I am now following, my prognosis and my chances of being completely cancer-free in ten or fifteen years are really bad. Good.”
Some personal news. pic.twitter.com/pUZlxkF3Gc
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) May 13, 2024
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He said the immunotherapy was “tough” but “I have every hope of being completely cancer-free for the rest of my life.” Bryant urged people: “If you have any doubts about a mole, get it examined.”
About his melanoma diagnosis in 2019, Bryant said: “I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach and I know I’m no one special. Hundreds and hundreds of people experience this all the time. You know, there’s going to be people who have this right today.
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He said he was moved by the way colleagues in parliament rallied around him. “I know people think politics is really nasty at the moment, but Tory MPs, Lib Dem MPs and nationalists have been absolutely wonderful to me.”