This is a story that Alannah Hill planned to keep a secret
- August 26, 2015
- Posted by: Spotscreen
- Category: Articles
This is a story that Alannah Hill planned to keep a secret. But we are grateful she decided to share it with us.
The Australian fashion designer had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma earlier this year. This shocking discovery was made when she booked an appointment with her doctor after injuring her toe on her home skirting board. She was unfortunately diagnosed with more than just a broken bone.
A little dot – dark and irregular, was spotted. The doctor took a biopsy and results came back that is was a skin cancer of the spreading type. Stunned at this discovery, she did what she had to do to be rid of the melanoma. She underwent surgery and part of her fourth toe on her left foot was removed.
Alannah always protected her skin from the sun and rarely wore thongs or sandals. Only once she recalls getting burnt as a child. But this wasn’t enough to stop the invasion of a melanoma. Her plan was to only tell her family and a handful of friends about her diagnosis, but her doctor encouraged her to share her story. Too often he claimed to have seen patient after patient leaving their visit to the doctor too late. Most cases ended in tragedy.
This is why skin cancer awareness is crucial to our society. 750,000 Australians are treated for skin cancer each year. Most Australians will develop some form of it in our lifetime. It kills more than 2000 annually; almost double our national road toll. Nearly all skin cancers can be treated successfully if they are found early.
An Aussie icon in the fashion industry, she is a very busy woman. Hill admits that her jam-packed schedule was the main reason she put off seeing the doctor for a skin check.
Message from Alannah Hill after her operation:
I guess we have to face and contemplate the sad fact that we’re all born to die.
Mortality is an intimate narrative within us that is also infused with extraordinary optimism. The alien invasion of one rogue cancer cell – and odd little me straying into the territory of Tumourtown – can, of course, be very worrying. We are not human unless we have these doubts, these fears and the sleepless nights.
I do take absolute care not be self-pitying or self-centred about it. That’s why I wanted to be silent.
I’m sure many others who get this news find the sentence “Oh, you’re so strong for facing this”, rather strange and perplexing. The real truth is that we have no choice in the matter. Having this diagnosis can often befriend weakness, which I think is always a grand thing to embrace. Strength often requires the acknowledgement of weakness and humility.
The strength, for me, lay there all curled up in a soft, pink ball of roses. The human spirit – with the need to live and be there for our children – is what pushes us through. And I know that every single person out there who has had to face this stands up and just gets on with it.
The main thing to remember – and I can’t stress this enough – is that we all, unfortunately, believe we are invincible.
I thought my little freckle was just a freckle getting bigger. But it was the first signs of a melanoma – which is a sign to go and get checked.
Getting checked is what the doctors preach most. They despair, so often, as they lose people after hearing the words, “If only … if only I’d gone earlier and gotten checked earlier.”
Then the race is on; the race for survival that affects everyone around us. I find it incredibly hard to imagine dying, so I refuse to indulge it, although my DNA is one of facing the enormous universe and the existential void all around this.
My message is simple. No matter how small your little mole is, no matter how insignificant it looks, go to your doctor and get it checked.
I know you’d rather walk out with him saying, “It’s fine; it’s nothing.” Not the telephone call that I received: “Hello Alannah, could you come back to the surgery please? We have something we need to talk about.”
The flipping over of my heart could be heard for miles. But we pull ourselves up, we forge ahead and we just get on with whatever it takes to live.
Please check every single part of your body.
We often forget how important we are. Not just to ourselves. But to the people we love, and who love us.
(The Sydney Morning Herald, 2015).
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