Mom’s Stage 4 Melanoma Spread from Fingernail to Brain, Says She ‘Begged for’ Scans That Could Have Caught It Sooner

• Kelly Heather, 38, first noticed a dark line on her fingernail, which turned out to be an aggressive melanoma that eventually required her finger to be amputated
• She says doctors refused to provide her with additional scans after the surgery, which she believes allowed the melanoma to metastasize and eventually spread to her brain
• Now facing terminal cancer, the mom of four says, “I do wonder what would have happened if I got that one scan I begged for”

A mom of four is struggling with stage four melanoma, which spread to her brain while she was pregnant — and she alleges it could have been avoided if her doctors had listened to her. 

Kelly Heather, 38, first visited her doctor in 2017 when she noticed a dark line on her middle fingernail. However, a series of tests said it was nothing to worry about. But the line got darker — and in three months, she was told she had melanoma, a serious form of skin cancer, underneath her nail.

That led to the first of several surgeries, she told South West News Service, via The Daily Mail. First, Heather had her nail bed removed; Six months later, a wart-like growth appeared at the tip of her finger, prompting her doctor to advise her to have her finger amputated.

“I said, ‘Whatever you need just take it,’ ” the mom, who hails from the English town of Kent, said. “I’d rather that than it spread anywhere else.”

After the surgery, she told the outlet, she asked for more tests, but doctors refused — a decision that she says allowed the cancer to spread. 

“They wouldn’t give me that extra peace of mind by having those further scans, and I think [the cancer] would have been picked up a lot earlier, before it went into my lymphatic system, which is where it spread quite quickly,” said Heather, who discovered a lump in her armpit two years after the amputation. 

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At this point, she says the melanoma was metastatic, prompting surgery to remove 20 lymph nodes. 

“Melanoma is the most aggressive form of skin cancer and it doesn’t follow rules of what all the other cancers follow,” she said. Following the surgery, she underwent immunotherapy and in April 2024, was told she was in remission.

But in December, while she was 35 weeks pregnant with her fourth child, Te-Jay, Heather began losing muscle control. 

“My leg started flicking out and shaking uncontrollably, and within not even a minute, I was having a full seizure in the kitchen,” she said. “I thought I was dying and all I could think was my kids have lost their mum and my baby is going to die.”

The cause of the seizure was a brain tumor — with the same genetic profiling as her melanoma, she says.

Heather was able to give birth to Te-Jay on Dec. 9, two weeks later she underwent brain surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible. As she explains, doctors couldn’t remove the entire tumor without causing permanent paralysis to her left side — requiring Heather to need radiation on the remaining tumor. 

Then, she received the dire news that there was a 25% chance the cancer could have spread to newborn Te-Jay.  

“No mum would ever want to think that they’ve possibly spread a cancer to their baby,” she said. Te-Jay is regularly monitored, and so far he’s healthy, Heather said, adding, “It’s just another worry.”

A GoFundMe has been established to support the family, who along with Te-Jay, includes children Preston, 17, Brendan, 15, and Rhea, 7, whom Heather shares with her partner Tom Woodcock. 

“She could be wheelchair bound but this is the least of her problems,” the GoFundMe explains, “Just staying alive over the next year is her biggest fight she has been given a 50% chance of the treatment working for her. Should this treatment fail to work in the first year there will be no other treatment available to Kelly.”

“I don’t think I’ve fully accepted that I have terminal cancer,” Heather told SWNS. “I do wonder what would have happened if I got that one scan I begged for. I feel things could have been dealt with differently and I might be in a different position to what I am now.”