{"id":863665,"date":"2026-08-21T22:24:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T22:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/863665\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T22:24:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T22:24:15","slug":"melanoma-aaron-thought-he-had-a-cracked-heel-by-the-time-the-doctors-discovered-the-cancer-it-was-too-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/863665\/","title":{"rendered":"Melanoma: Aaron thought he had a cracked heel. By the time the doctors discovered the cancer, it was too late"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: At just 15, Patrick Thomson walks, talks and behaves so much like the dad he barely knew<\/a> that it leaves his grandmother Glenda Thomson breathless.<\/p>\n

Unlike his father, Patrick should live to see 30.<\/p>\n

\"Aaron<\/p>\n

Aaron Thomson held his son Patrick on the day he was born. Two days later, Aaron was dead.\u00a0Thomson family<\/p>\n

Aaron Thomson died two days after Patrick was born, killed at age 27 by metastatic melanoma<\/a> that started as nothing more than a cracked heel.<\/p>\n

An estimated 17,443 melanoma cases were diagnosed last year and about 1455 Australians died<\/a>, despite the 94 per cent five-year survival rate.<\/p>\n

Now Australia is approaching its first summer since testing revealed that multiple popular SPF products failed to provide their labelled protection<\/a>, sparking a major regulatory and consumer crisis.<\/p>\n

Glenda fears weakened trust in the sunscreen industry<\/a> could put more young Aussies at risk of the insidious disease that stole her son from her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s education out there, and the education is better than it used to be, but I still think that young blokes think they\u2019re invincible,\u201d Glenda told nine.com.au.<\/p>\n

Have you got a story? Contact reporter Maddison Skipper: mskipper@nine.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

Raised in a sunburnt country<\/p>\n

Aaron grew up playing footy on sun-drenched fields in Lameroo, South Australia, about two hours east of Adelaide.<\/p>\n

After school, he joined the Navy, served in Iraq, then went to work for a mining company in Western Australia.<\/p>\n

When he wasn\u2019t working in the sun, he was holidaying in it, and it was during a family trip to West Beach, SA, that his mother first realised something was wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cI noticed on the bed he was sleeping in that there was blood all over the sheets,\u201d Glenda said.<\/p>\n

Aaron blamed a cracked heel that had been giving him grief for a few months; every time he thought it had healed, it cracked back open again.<\/p>\n

Assuming his heavy work boots were to blame, he had brushed it off as harmless. Glenda urged him to get it checked out anyway.<\/p>\n

\"Glenda<\/p>\n

Glenda Thomson knew there was something wrong when she found blood on Aaron\u2019s sheets. \u00a0Thomson family<\/p>\n

\u201cHe eventually went to a doctor and they diagnosed him with a plantar wart. It looked like a plantar wart,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

When it still wouldn\u2019t heal, Aaron got a second opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive different GPs diagnosed it as a plantar wart, and Aaron, being young and naive, never once asked for a biopsy,\u201d Glenda said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time it was biopsied, it was just way, way too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Misdiagnosis to metastatic melanoma<\/p>\n

Aaron\u2019s heel continued to bleed and as the months went on, he started experiencing bouts of fatigue as well. <\/p>\n

He and his then-fianc\u00e9e didn\u2019t know what to make of his mystery symptoms. Then Glenda spotted the lump behind his knee.<\/p>\n

\"Aaron<\/p>\n

Aaron Thomson was a healthy, active young man before he was diagnosed with melanoma and given months to live.\u00a0Thomson family<\/p>\n

Again, she begged her son to get it checked; again, doctors insisted it was nothing to worry about.<\/p>\n

They told Aaron the lump was a benign Baker\u2019s cyst, a fluid-filled growth behind the knee that can cause pain and stiffness, that could be surgically removed.<\/p>\n

His wedding was just a few months away, so Aaron put off the surgery until the week after his nuptials.<\/p>\n

When surgeons finally opened him up in December 2010, almost a year after Glenda first noticed blood on the sheets, they were horrified.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was riddled with cancer,\u201d Glenda said.<\/p>\n

Testing revealed the melanoma had started on Aaron\u2019s heel and spread through his body, but that might have been prevented if it had been caught early.<\/p>\n

Melanoma is the third most common cancer in Australia, and the most common cancer in young Aussies aged 20 to 39.<\/p>\n

One in every 17 Aussies are diagnosed with melanoma in their lifetime, and one Aussie dies from melanoma every six hours.<\/p>\n

Despite the damning statistics, about 90 per cent of melanoma cases can be treated if detected early \u2013 but many cases, like Aaron\u2019s, go undetected for far too long.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey gave him less than nine months to live,\u201d Glenda said.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially, he didn\u2019t tell me how bag the prognosis was, but I could see from how he was walking that it was in his hips, I knew it was in his bones. <\/p>\n

\u201cI knew that he probably didn\u2019t have much time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aaron\u2019s wife Rhiannon discovered she was expecting their first child shortly after he was diagnosed, so Aaron threw himself into chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, and a clinical trial in a bid to survive long enough to become a father.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe never stopped, he never gave up the will to live. He used to always say, \u2018I\u2019m gonna see Father\u2019s Day,\u2019\u201d Glenda said.<\/p>\n

Aaron\u2019s son, Patrick was born on September 2, 2011. Two days later, on his first and only Father\u2019s Day as a dad, Aaron died.<\/p>\n

Keeping Aaron\u2019s legacy alive<\/p>\n

Before Aaron passed, he made his mum promise that she would keep his memory alive and work to save other young men from the same fate.<\/p>\n

He had created a short film about melanoma, his diagnosis, and the importance of early detection which he wanted her to use as a tool for education.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, that was my last promise to him,\u201d Glenda said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe made me promise that I would do it, and I upheld that promise. He was going to never let this happen to another family.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been nearly 15 years since Aaron died, and Glenda\u2019s still keeping that promise.<\/p>\n

\"Glenda<\/p>\n

Glenda doesn\u2019t want another family to experience what she, Rhiannon and Patrick did when they lost Aaron.\u00a0Thomson family<\/p>\n

She\u2019s urging Aussies to support the Australian Melanoma Research Foundation\u2019s (AMRF)<\/a> life-saving research by donating, fundraising and getting involved.<\/p>\n

When Aaron died in 2011, fewer than 10 per cent of Aussies diagnosed with melanoma survived; that figure was up to more than 55 per cent by 2024.<\/p>\n

But Glenda isn\u2019t satisfied with 55 per cent.<\/p>\n

She dreams of a future when melanoma won\u2019t steal another father from his son, a husband from his wife, or a child from his mother \u2013 but that future can only be achieved through research, education and awareness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you find a lump, don\u2019t just take one opinion. If you\u2019re not happy with the answer, or you haven\u2019t found an answer, then don\u2019t sit back,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And she\u2019ll keep saying it as long as she lives; to keep her promise to Aaron, and to keep his legacy alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone that\u2019s lost a child likes to keep their memory alive. The day they stop talking about them is a day that they\u2019re forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive: At just 15, Patrick Thomson walks, talks and behaves so much like the dad he barely knew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,137],"class_list":["post-863665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}