The lump was diagnosed as a rare cancer that develops in soft tissues such as fat, muscle, blood vessels, lymphatic vessels, nerves, tendons and cartilage.
The lump was diagnosed as a rare cancer that develops in soft tissues such as fat, muscle, blood vessels, lymphatic vessels, nerves, tendons and cartilage.
An Aussie mum has shared her shocking story after a tiny lump on her hand resulted in amputation.
Rosie-May Fisher, 32, first noticed the “soft and painless” mass in the middle of her left palm in 2010.
After brushing it off as an “odd thing that appeared on my body”, she brought it up with her doctor in an unrelated appointment two years later.
Fisher then had an MRI, which classified the lump as non-suspicious, leading doctors to think it was perhaps a benign sebaceous cyst.
In May 2020, Fisher welcomed her son, Bobby. However, promptly after that, things took a turn for the worse. Fisher revealed that the growth “started to get bigger and a little bit painful”.
“So I went back to the GP and said, ‘Can we just get rid of it? Because it’s annoying and painful.’”
Fisher was then put on a waiting list for a year seeing as though the surgery was considered non-urgent. The lump was eventually removed last October, however, doctors found something they weren’t expecting.
Fisher said her surgeon “came in with a really serious look on her face”.
“She told me they did a biopsy on the lump after they removed it and the results came back saying it was a rare type of cancer,” Fisher revealed.
“I was in disbelief. I wasn’t sure if I was in the right room.”
The discovery of the cancer meant that Fisher’s treatment plan would be extreme.
For 12 years, Fisher was told the lump was benign. She was then told that doctors needed to amputate. Photo / Getty Images
Further scans revealed that, while the rest of Fisher’s body was luckily cancer-free, it had spread across parts of the mum’s hand.
Chemotherapy and radiation was deemed an ineffective treatment for the tumour. Fisher was warned he cancer could spread if she waited. The safest treatment, she was told, was amputation.
In December — 12 years after she initially discovered the lump — Fisher underwent a surgical amputation of her middle and ring fingers.
After receiving the daunting surgery, Fisher revealed she was “still just trying to find my feet again”.
“It’s changed my life, physically, mentally and emotionally,” she said.
“I can’t carry him or tie up his shoelaces, or my own shoelaces, do the shopping, push a trolley, push a pram.
“I go to pick things up and forget there are fingers not there.”
Fisher now has regular checkups, as epithelioid sarcoma has a high re-occurrence rate. She also advised others to seek out a second medical opinion whenever they have concerns, as she is convinced that if a biopsy had been done earlier, amputation would have been avoided.
