When a friend spotted the red lump on Georgie Rutherford's left arm in May 2019, the 34-year-old professional triathlete brushed off her pal's concern - and forgot it was even there. But four months later, on holiday, Georgie's brothers brought up the bump again. Worried it looked "big and angry," they urged her to seek medical attention. From the get-go, doctors assured her it was nothing more than a benign collection of visible blood vessels, so it took another several months for Georgie to finally have the lump biopsied and receive the news: "It was stage 2C melanoma," she says. "I went numb. How could this have gone from harmless blood vessels to cancer so quickly?"
THE STATS
Skin cancer remains one of the most common cancers worldwide, and while melanoma (its deadliest form) makes up only 1 percent of those cases, women under the age of 49 are more likely to develop melanoma than any other cancer except for breast and thyroid. Still, the diagnosis didn’t make sense to Georgie. Though fair-skinned with blonde hair, she had no family history of skin cancer. Plus, she was fit and energetic. “I assumed people with cancer felt sick in some way,” she says.
RUNNING THE RISK
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