A young woman has claimed that a popular TikTok trend 'saved her life' after discovering a lump on her neck that turned out to be cancer. Helen Bender was using the latest craze gua sha massage tool on her face in a bid to sculpt a more defined jawline, when she first felt a bump under her skin.
The 26-year-old assumed it was a swollen lymph node caused by her cold, but when the mass continued to grow and her weight plummeted, she booked an oncologist appointment. Helen, who had been in remission for five years from a previous melanoma diagnosis, was stunned when doctors told her the cancer was back.
The beauty lover was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and she began a two-year course of immunotherapy to tackle the cancer cells.
Eight months into her treatment, Helen is sharing her ordeal to urge people to keep to medical appointments and get anything unusual checked out by a doctor.
Helen, from Mobile, Alabama, US, said: "Using the gua shua saved my life.
"If I hadn't used it so early on I'd probably have skipped the appointment and not managed to get it looked at. I could have died.
"I'd seen girls on TikTok use a gua shua on their face and one night I was using it doing a lymphatic massage.
"I'd started to use it to try and make my face skinnier when I noticed this bump, I wasn't sure what it was. I get sick a lot with colds and stuff, so I thought at first it was just a swollen lymph node.
"Then I noticed I'd lost a lot of weight. I was loving it thinking 'I'm so skinny', not realising it was cancer."
As the lump didn't hurt Helen was unconcerned, but when it started to grow she went to a dermatologist who urged her to re-book a missed oncologist appointment.
"I have a history of cancer. When I was 18 I had a mole come up on my back," Helen said.
"They did a biopsy and it came back as melanoma, which was crazy as I'd never used a tanning bed. The spot was removed and I'd been in remission for over five years."
Helen attended the appointment in April and a follow-up scan in May, where it was discovered she had tumours throughout her body, including on her pancreas, both lungs and a cluster in her intestines.
"There were around 20 lumps, it had spread throughout my body to multiple areas. It actually says on my records it's possibly stage five," Helen said.
"I had my fiancé come and meet me at the doctors office, we were both crying.
"I couldn't tell my dad, it's so hard to tell that kind of news to family members. So the doctor told my dad, and my dad told my mum and sister.
"They just hugged me and told me we were going to get through this. It was really hard seeing them, especially my sister.
"I asked my doctor how long he thought I would have, and he said someone had come to him at a similar stage and they died in six weeks."
Helen started a course of immunotherapy at the Mitchell Cancer Institute in Mobile, Alabama, in early June.
The medicine initially caused the tumours to balloon so much that strangers in the street stopped her and said they would pray for her.
Now the swelling has gone down, Helen's tumours are no longer painful and she says she feels positive for her future as the treatment appears to be working.
"We knew immunotherapy was the only option. There's a 50/50 chance if it works for you or not and if it doesn't then it's basically a death sentence," she explained.
"The medicine enlarged the tumours even more as they swell before they get better, so they got crazy big.
"It was pretty painful. On my jaw, the lump was pressing on a nerve and it got difficult to swallow.
"I had a really big tumour in my left thigh, about the size of my fist, it grew so huge that my muscles would ache so badly.
"I couldn't go to the rest room for so long as some were in my intestines [and] it was causing internal problems.
"It was hard seeing myself in the mirror as the lump on my jaw would remind me I could die, it made it hard to forget."
Helen has been having the treatment for seven months and so far it's looking positive, though she still has a lot of tumours.
"I have another year-and-a-half of medicine, and they're predicting I'll go into remission in under two years," she said.
"It's working really well. It doesn't have the same effects that chemotherapy does, so I have a pretty good quality of life.
"The one thing now that I always want to tell people is to go to your appointments."
You can donate to Helen's treatment on her fundraising page.
Do you have a real-life story to share? Email nia.dalton@reachplc.com.
