In 2011, when he was 28 years old, the unthinkable happened to Craig: a changing mole he had noticed on his scalp was diagnosed as melanoma. What he thought would just be a quick fix turned into years of battling Australia’s national cancer.

When he was first diagnosed, Craig was understandably confused. ‘I thought that melanoma was something that happened to old people; that melanoma wasn’t something I needed to worry about until I was much, much older.’ What Craig knows now, though, is that melanoma is the most common cancer affecting young Australians between the ages of 20-39.

This was just the beginning of Craig’s melanoma journey. In 2012, Craig noticed a golf ball-sized lump in his neck and had to have a lymph node dissection.

In 2014, a PET scan revealed that Craig had many melanomas around his buttocks, which were surgically removed.

‘Following the surgery, another PET scan, detected 27 lesions throughout my body. This was in 2014, when there wasn’t nearly as much data on targeted therapy as there is today.’

‘When I was told that it had spread so drastically, I really thought that that would be it for me. This was a fair assumption back then too – I was told I had three months to live. It was absolutely devastating.’

However, targeted therapy worked for Craig for six years, until 2020, when treatment was stopped due to complications of being on his treatment long-term. The symptoms from his complications disappeared, but his next PET scan picked up on a melanoma recurrence under his arm. This was surgically removed, as was another melanoma that came up under his other arm a few months later.

Fortunately, a new immunotherapy drug became available which was used to successfully treat Craig.

Craig has shown no evidence of disease since.

‘I joined Speakers’ Hub as I want to raise awareness around melanoma to hopefully stop people from going through what I have – I know that prevention can save your life. I also hope that spreading this message far and wide leads to raising funds for research. Without research, I wouldn’t be here today. I’ve witnessed firsthand how critical melanoma research is, and the advances that we are capable of, purely by comparing the treatments available to me from when I was first diagnosed to today. Hopefully, one day, research can lead us to zero deaths from melanoma.’