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In 1969 Jean noticed a mole on the back of her calf. After a bad sunburn it began to itch and grow. Her doctor diagnosed it as malignant melanoma. She was scheduled for immediate surgery. They cut out the mole, removed the lymph nodes in her leg and a nerve in her thigh. They skin grafted from her other leg to fill the hole in her calf yet she was still left with a scar the size of tea cup saucer. They did not expect her to live and were not even sure they'd removed all the cancer. But she survived. She always told me that her doctor said that she and the actor Van Johnson, were the only two people to have survived that type of cancer and surgery in the year 1969. Unfortunately, lung cancer claimed her in 1998.
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