I thought I'd pulled a muscle - in fact it was terminal cancer

A mother-of-three has told of her devastation after what she believed to be a 'pulled muscle' in her shoulder turned out to be stage four cancer. 

The first sign something was wrong came when Claire Turner, 43, tried to pass her daughter a croissant in the car. 

The accountant from Didcot, Oxfordshire was in the front passenger seat as her husband Mark Turner, 49, drove the family on a weekend away in October last year.

As she turned to pass the pastry over to 11-year-old Annabelle in the back seat, she felt a twinge in her right shoulder.

Doctors initially said it was a torn ligament but Ms Turner became concerned weeks later when she noticed a slight swelling on the top her shoulder, the size of a £2 coin.

The growth continued to balloon over the the next few weeks and it became so painful she couldn't wear a bra or carry a bag, she says.

After multiple trips to her GP and hospital, in January Ms Turner underwent a biopsy and scans  that revealed it was a stage four melanoma — a deadly type of skin cancer.

Ms Turner, who used sunbeds in her 20s, is now facing an uncertain future, and is urging people to avoid harmful UV rays to avoid the same fate.

There are roughly 17,500 new diagnoses of melanoma each year in the UK and numbers are rising at an alarming rate.

Since the 90s, rates in women have around doubled and almost tripled in men. Today, more than 2,300 people die from the disease each year in the UK.

Melanoma begins in melanocytes, the cells that produce melanin and give skin its color.

However it can grow rapidly and enter the bloodstream, leading to tumours invading other parts of the body — this is know as stage four cancer.

At this stage, treatment becomes tricky: fewer than half of patients with stage four melanoma survive more than five years from diagnosis. 

Ms Turner said: 'It was a blessing that injury happened. I don't know what I did that day but obviously some movement made that tumour swell and move.

'We were off to the beach heading down for the weekend with friends to the coast. We had a packed breakfast for the children.

'As we were heading down they all said they were hungry. I passed breakfast, including a croissant, banana and bottle of water, back to one of them and I felt like I pulled a muscle.

'I thought "that's painful" but then I carried on with the day. It was pretty painful carrying a bag and that night it was quite painful to lean back on it.'

The accountant visited hospital following the trip and after an X-ray showed nothing serious doctors told her it appeared to be a torn ligament.

'They gave me painkillers and told me to keep it strapped up and rest it for a couple of weeks and that it should settle down and it did,' recalls Ms Turner. 

Weeks later, she noticed her shoulder looked slightly swollen while travelling to work.

She said: 'I went to the GP and [was told] that shoulder injuries can take a while to heal.'

The mum booked an online GP appointment and was referred to an orthopaedic consultant in December.

After having an MRI scan she was referred to a cancer clinic and faced an agonising wait over Christmas waiting for a diagnosis, while 'expecting the worst'.

Claire said: 'By this point it was quite apparent and it was quite a substantial swelling on my shoulder. I couldn't carry a bag or wear a bra.

'I went on a spiral over Christmas. It was awful, and I was expecting the worst. It's the lowest I've felt in the whole journey.'

When she was finally given her diagnosis, Ms Turner 'felt winded', she says, adding: 'It threw me sideways, I was just shocked.

'Melanoma is a dodgy mole and it goes from there, that's what I thought.

'It starts with a skin lesion, you look at it and ignore it, that's what I thought skin cancer was.

'The doctor said I had a 50/50 chance of coming out of the other side of this.'

In the vast majority of melanoma cases, the 'primary tumour' — the place on the skin that the cancer started in, often a mole — is known.

However in around three per cent of cases, it's never found. These patients are only diagnosed after tumours begin appearing around the body. 

Experts believe in these cases the primary tumour, at some point, shrunk and disappeared meaning it went unnoticed.

For this reason, doctors say a mole that gets smaller — not just ones that change and get larger — are a warning sign that should be checked out.

Ms Turner said: 'There was no primary on my skin. The nurse told me: "It could be that there was something on the skin and your body healed it." 

'But the cancer cells got so deep that they travelled round for months or even years and created other tumours.'

Ms Turner underwent immunotherapy but was forced to stop in August after it caused inflammation to her pituitary gland and optic nerve.

Despite this, she is philosophical about her predicament: 'I'm grateful I got it checked out.

'My nurse said to me that 10 years ago with my diagnosis I would be given six to seven months to live. That was quite shocking.'

Although scans revealed further tumours in her liver, leg and buttock muscles and all around her shoulder, these are now either shrinking or have disappeared. 

One of the biggest risk factors for skin cancer is UV exposure.

Ms Turner is now urging others to look after their skin to prevent the same thing happening to them.

She said: 'I did use sun beds and I've been burned in the sun striving for a tan, a tan doesn't last. Fake tan doesn't last and real tan doesn't last but which one's safer?'