It was a huge surprise. Lauren, a teaching assistant and the wife of Mr. Smith, stated, “We met with a surgeon who said they were going to remove the three lymph nodes.”
We didn’t think it would require a major operation, but when we got in, they discovered that it had spread to Stu’s sternocleidomastoid muscles, which are placed on either side of the throat.
Until he woke up and noticed that half of his neck was gone, he was unaware of that. He simply had the will to fight after that first shock.
“We believed we were done because the operation went well.” A regular exam in 2023, however, showed that the melanoma had reappeared and had spread far farther.
The illness had now spread to his liver, lungs, and thighs. “We started to get our life back to normal after we bought a house and got our dog,” Ms. Smith stated.
