A young New Zealand mum is picturing her daughter's life without her after doctors found a cluster of incurable tumours on her heart.
Victoria Hudson-Craig, originally from the UK, moved to New Zealand in 2015 where she met her husband and had daughter Ruby in 2017.
The move came as she was in "a dark place" following a melanoma diagnosis in 2013, Hudson-Craig told The Daily Mail.
At the time, alarm bells rang when a shoulder mole, which had changed shape a few times but never concerned doctors, began to bleed down the then 33-year-old's back.
Now, fast-forward 11 years, doctors say her rare form of melanoma is incurable.
It comes after an accidental discovery in October 2020.
Hudson-Craig said she was rushed to hospital for abdominal pain, where they did a scan before surgery.
"The radiologist's hand slipped and accidentally scanned the bottom of my heart - where two tumours were visible," she told The Daily Mail.
After further testing, the mum was diagnosed with four tumours on her heart - three around the bottom of the muscle and one in the middle.
Papworth Hospital in the UK did an analysis that showed it was more likely than anything else that the tumours were a result of melanoma.
Hudson-Craig was stunned at the diagnosis given the lack of symptoms.
She recalled slight heart palpitations, but was also going through early menopause at the time so believed it was due to her hormonal changes.
She was then treated for stage 4 melanoma and started immunotherapy - but it proved ineffective. Things only got worse in 2021.
"The cancer was progressing and doctors also found a fifth tumour in my heart in December 2021. The week before Christmas, doctors told me all the five tumours had grown and the biggest one was 6cm."
Hudson-Craig started on self-funded BRAF inhibitor drugs and found her tumours had been shrinking.
However, the medicine also impacted her quality of life causing severe health anxiety.
She also suffered other side-effects, including high fevers and fatigue. She couldn't get out of bed some days.
'She will grow up without me'
Hudson-Craig said she's now focused on spending as much quality time with family as possible, even though her daughter doesn't know about her incurable cancer.
"She knows there's something wrong with my heart, and that I take medication for it but she doesn't understand that it's cancer or what that means. She doesn't know that it's incurable," the mum told The Daily Mail.
"The future is so uncertain, and one of the things that breaks my heart the most is knowing that she will grow up without me."
Hudson-Craig said her husband, Ryan, had been her rock throughout the cancer journey.
For now, her medication is keeping the tumours stable - but if they continue to grow doctors fear it'll cause heart failure.
A fundraising page has been set up to help the family. Donate here.
