Chris Capstick and his family are trying to come to terms with his life-changing diagnosis
A dad who thought the ‘cyst’ on his back was from an insect bite at his Greek wedding has instead been given months to live.
Chris Capstick, 41, initially thought his symptoms were minor, after his marriage to Lauren, 30, in Greece in 2022.
For the next six months, Chris, from Bromborough, Merseyside, was in and out of his GP practice as it kept changing colour. Doctors initially told him it was a cyst, a round lump, often filled with fluid or pus. They’re usually harmless and often do not need treatment, but this was not the case with Chris, reports the Liverpool Echo.
Chris said: “I got married in Greece and that’s when we noticed the ‘insect bite’. Doctors told me it was a cyst. I went back several times as it changed colour and started to grow, and they kept saying it was a cyst.
“Then I was in work and it was quite uncomfortable. I got speaking to a colleague who said that her husband had a cyst removed in their GP surgery.
“So I went back and asked the GP if they could remove it, which they did in February 2023. As soon as they removed it, I think they noticed it wasn’t a cyst and sent it off for testing.”
Chris was then diagnosed with stage four melanoma, a form of skin cancer. Stage four means the melanoma has spread to parts of the body away from the original cancer and further than the nearby lymph nodes.
Chris said he was given just a 15% chance of survival, and was sitting with Lauren, who was pregnant at the time, when he received the news. The couple now have three young children together – Isabella, six, Mila, 10, and Nylah, two.
Chris subsequently had his lymph nodes removed. After receiving his diagnosis, he spent 13 months on immunotherapy and was briefly cancer-free at the start of 2025. But just six months later, six tumours were found on Chris’s brain with another six in his body, meaning his cancer was terminal.
Chris said: “I was given 10 to 12 months to live. It was a massive shock for me and the family. We try to stay positive. I’m trying everything. I’m trying red light therapy, oxygen therapy.
“I’ve just done a stint in the hospital, just due to some side effects. My liver enzymes are quite high at the moment, so I’ve not had treatment for two months. We’re trying to get them down via steroids. I’m trying to stay positive which is not always easy.”
Just over a year on from being told he had a year to live. Chris now doesn’t know how long he has left.
He said: “I had six tumours on my brain. Five of the tumours have disappeared, there’s just one left on my brain now, so something’s working, hopefully. At the moment I haven’t got a prognosis of how long I can live.”
Isabella, has written a children’s book, Daddy’s Little Monsters, to help other children understand a parent’s serious illness. Over £630 has been raised so far to print and distribute the book to cancer centres, hospices and Maggie’s Centres across the UK.
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Chris said: “We really struggled to explain it to all our children. My wife spent some time with Isabella, and she explained that daddy’s got monsters in his stomach and planned to use medicine to kill them.
“Then she did some sort of art therapy and created the book over six months and published it via Amazon. To date, we’ve sold just shy of 300 copies.
“We’ve dropped copies in Arrowe Park, Clatterbridge, Maggie’s Cancer Centre in Wirral and Lancaster Oncology. It would mean everything (to have the book across the UK). It’s my legacy in a way.”
You can find out more about the fundraiser here.
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