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Mum's hay fever symptoms lead to rare diagnosis

Bea Swallow
BBC News, West of England
Cancer Research UK Melanie Wellings wearing a blue and white patterned long-sleeved top and black framed glasses. She has short brown hair and a white bandage over her left eye. She is standing in a garden in front of a brown fence, a wooden birdhouse, some bushes and hanging plants. She is holding a yellow and blue mesh hospital mask in one hand and holding her other index finger in the air.Cancer Research UK
Melanie Wellings now has a hole the size of a "small orange" in her face after undergoing surgery

A mum who thought she was suffering from hay fever was "shocked" to discover she has a rare cancer which affects fewer than one in a million people.

Melanie Wellings, from Gloucestershire, was told by doctors in 2021 that she was the only person in the UK living with sinonasal mucosal melanoma (SNMM).

The aggressive tumours had attached to her eye and it took surgeons 11 hours to remove them, leaving Ms Wellings with a permanent hole in her face the "size of a small orange".

The 63-year-old has said she is "giving herself to science" so people diagnosed with SNMM in the future will have a better chance at treatment options.

Cancer Research UK A selfie of Melanie Wellings before the surgery or cancer diagnosis. She is wearing a white collared shirt, has short dark hair in a pixie cut, and is smiling at the camera.Cancer Research UK
Ms Wellings said she initially disregarded her symptoms because they were "classic signs" of hay fever

Ms Wellings symptoms first appeared during the Covid-19 pandemic but she initially dismissed it as allergies, despite never having suffered from hay fever.

"I'd had no pain, just runny eyes, runny nose, sneezing and eventually a nosebleed," she said.

"It came as such a shock to be told I had cancer, let alone one so rare."

Ms Wellings underwent several surgeries to remove the tumours but they soon returned, fusing her eyeball to the surrounding bone.

"The only way we could eradicate and control my disease was to lose my eye, but I was willing to do that just to live," she said.

Surgeons took several skin grafts and veins from her arm to rebuild her face. But the grafts did not take, meaning she was left with a permanent hole where her eye socket is.

However, her latest scans show the cancer is stable.

Cancer Research UK A selfie of Melanie Wellings lying in a hospital bed wearing a blue and white patterned gown. She has short dark brown hair, and is looking slightly down at the camera. She has just undergone surgery, and has a thin red scar and stitches across her face, running from her inner left eye, around her nose and down the middle of her top lip. Cancer Research UK
Ms Wellings had 100 stitches down the side of her nose and mouth

Ms Wellings is now backing a call from Cancer Research UK for people to leave a gift to the charity in their will.

The Gifts in Wills scheme funds a third of the charity's work, which has helped double cancer survival in the UK by investing in pioneering trials and research.

"Advances in research mean people are being diagnosed earlier, have access to kinder and more effective treatments, and some cancers are prevented completely," Ms Wellings said.

"People could help give the gift of hope to many more people like me."

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