Seven’s Kirstie Fitzpatrick shock cancer journey, encourages others to check for signs

A young news presenter has shared the moment she received a ‘scary’ phone call that changed her life when she was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer.

Kirstie Fitzpatrick was just 19 when she noticed a painful lesion on her elbow that appeared “overnight.”

The strange mark led her to visit multiple pharmacists and doctors, who told her not to worry and encouraged her to remove it “for cosmetic purposes.”

“It was sensitive to the touch, a strange texture and shape, flesh-colored, rough and painful,” said the now 27-year-old.

The reporter had it removed not long before she moved from her childhood home in Orange to a dorm at Macquarie University, and received a strange phone call from her doctor one Saturday morning.

‘[I] went on living for three weeks [after the surgery] and didn’t think twice…until I got a little creepy phone call,” she shared 7Life.

“I didn’t understand why my doctor called me and thought it was kind of strange.

“Then she said the word ‘cancer’ and that was the first time I heard my name and the word cancer in the same sentence. At 7 pm.

“It was very, very scary.”

Ms Fitzpatrick was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of skin cancer that remains unidentified to this day, and her case evolved over time from pathologists to eventually head of pathology at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

“Nobody knew how to identify this,” she added.

The then 19-year-old (pictured) put her studies on the back burner and returned home to Orange to be with family while she was treated for her mysterious melanoma

“As a result, it was classified as an aggressive form of melanoma, but to this day they still don’t know exactly what it was or what caused it.”

The reporter moved back in with her parents in Orange before she started treatment.

“And that was Sydney university done and dusted off for me, and I started the process of figuring out what my next steps were,” she said.

She said it was “quite intense,” with many hours of traveling back and forth to see her oncologist in Sydney for appointments.

“It’s that feeling of the unknown, just having no idea what this meant,” she added.

What this was going to do to my life. What this meant to me.’

To have the cancer cells removed, Ms Fitzpatrick underwent “invasive and major surgery” that involved cutting out her lymph nodes and cancer cells, leaving her unable to move her arm for six weeks.

Ms Fitzpatrick (pictured) had to relearn how to drive, shower and bend her arm after her ‘major and invasive’ operation to remove her lymph nodes and cancer cells

Then she had to relearn how to drive, shower and bend her elbow.

“Within a few weeks I got the results back to say the cancer was localized in that area,” she said.

“So there was no spread to the lymphatic system or to the blood, so they had isolated it during that surgery, which was good news.”

Ms. Fitzpatrick is now an ambassador for the Skin Cancer College Australasia and encourages others to check their skin regularly.

“Anything that can be sore, scaly, bleeding, tender, changing shape, size, or color. Is it abnormal? Does it feel different?’ she added.

“If you notice anything that’s different, find a licensed skin cancer professional so they can do a full-body skin check and make sure there’s nothing wrong.”

The reporter (pictured) believes her experience gave her the ‘kick’ to study journalism, something she always wanted to be

Now, nearly a decade later, she’s had two more surgeries to potentially remove cancer cells she found during regular self-checks.

“It was and still is a big part of my life,” she says.

She believes her experience gave her the “kick” she needed to begin journalism studies and enroll at Charles Sturt University after her major surgery.

“If this hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t be a journalist,” she revealed.

“I’ve always wanted to be a journalist. I’ve always wanted to tell stories.’