A woman has shared a stark warning after receiving a shock skin cancer diagnosis at the age of 29.
Courtney Mangan was given just an 18 percent chance of survival when she received the devastating news that she had stage 4 skin cancer.
At the time, Courtney, who hails from Australia's Gold Coast, had been to her doctors on two separate occasions about a mole that she was concerned about.
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But her worries were dismissed, and it wasn't until she sought out medical advise from a skincare specialist that Courtney was given the bad news that it was already 'too late'.
"I had a mole on my back that I never really saw - but my family told me it started to change and urged me to see a doctor," she recalled.
"The specialist checked my whole body and said everything looked normal but I expressed my concern about the mole on my back so he took a cutting and sent it to pathology."
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Courtney continued to tell Daily Mail Australia that she quickly received the call she didn't want to get from her doctor, who confirmed that her mole had come back as level four melanoma and that she needed to see another specialist in Brisbane.
"I immediately went numb - my uncle had died from melanoma just a few years prior," Courtney, now 38, said of the moment she was told the news.
"My whole world changed in that moment. I couldn't think of it as anything other than a death sentence."
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But at this point, she hadn't received her stage 4 diagnosis.
It wasn't until Courtney began to experience more symptoms that she was told her cancer was stage 4.
A year after doctors removed the mole on her shoulder that was cancerous, Courtney developed a lump in her arm.
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Then she started to experience pain while she ate - something she initially believed was because of her irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
But an endoscopy then confirmed that she had a mass in her bowel and, after operating on her, Courtney was told her cancer had spread to her internal organs and was now stage four.
Another mass was later found in her thigh, but doctors were unable to remove it.
Fortunately, Courtney has now been cancer free for three years, but she says you can 'never really shake' the fear of her illness coming back.
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"There's a dark cloud hanging over you all the time," she added.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the American Cancer Society on 1-800-227-2345 or via their live chat feature, available 24/7 every day of the year.
Niamh Shackleton