Staying Strong
- Model and mom Slick Woods, 24, is featured on the cover of L’Officiel Italia magazine amid her battle with stage 3 melanoma. The young beauty recently chose to stop chemotherapy treatment and is living life as fully as she can.
- Woods’ cancer was discovered at a routine dental exam, where her dentist noticed spots in her mouth and had them tested.
- Melanoma survivor JB Ward tells SurvivorNet how she mentally handles a terminal diagnosis with the help of a mantra, “I’m not going to die today and I’m not going to die tomorrow … and as long as I knew that to be true, I knew that I could handle anything.”
Woods, who was born Simone Thompson in Minnesota, recently said that she has stopped chemotherapy treatment after significant nerve damage and side effects that she chose to no longer put up with.
Read More"I never really had a childhood," Woods said in a 2018 interview with The Guardian. "My mother went to prison when I was four. I was on my own." By the time her mother, Vonnya-Leah Mason, was released (from a manslaughter charge) in February 2019, her daughter had already been discovered at a bus stop while homeless in Los Angeles, and was gaining momentum.
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The mother and daughter kept up a relationship throughout the jail sentence and would have 15-minute talks three times a day. "We talk about everything except modeling. She asks me how my day is. We don't need to talk about magazines," Woods said in an interview with Elle. "Being a gang member, everybody expected her not to be the best mum. But my mum was very hands-on with me as a child. My mummy read to me in the womb."
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Woods also had made her mother a grandmother before she got out of prison. She gave birth to son Saphir in September 2018, after initially going into labor while walking Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty runway show during New York Fashion Week.
“A lewk, 14 hours of labor, and A king is born,” Woods said of the birth on her Instagram. “This is the face of a WOMAN IN LABOR, we hold shit down most of us don't even know how much we're going through, I'm here to say I CAN DO WHATEVER THE (expletive) I WANT WHENEVER THE (expletive) I WANT AND SO CAN YOU.” The baby’s dad is fellow model, thirty-year-old Adonis Bosso.
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“I had to grow up, and I didn’t even get to be a kid my damn self,” Woods told CNN in an interview. “No one wants to hang out with the pregnant lady that used to be the party girl.” Now, the young mother is spending time with her son, and continuing to focus on her efforts to help the homeless in Los Angeles’ Skid Row neighborhood.
Melanoma without Chemotherapy Treatment
Without treatment, melanoma can be fatal. After the cancer reached the lymph nodes, as it has in Woods’ case, it can then spread to other organs.
"Patients with stage 3 disease probably have a 50/50 chance of being 'ok' with just a surgical resection," Dr. Anna Pavlick, medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medicine, tells SurvivorNet. "However, we now have brand new medicines, or immunotherapy medicines, that can significantly reduce their risk of it ever coming back."
Woods’ cancer was spotted at a routine dental exam, where her dentist noticed spots in her mouth and had them tested. It is imperative to get regular check-ups with a doctor and dermatologist.
Melanoma Treatment Has ‘Come a Long Way’
Living for Today
Melanoma survivor JB Ward has a similar attitude to Woods, and she continues to be happy to live each day, and spend time with her son. “I’ll have a moment where I’m frustrated or I’m upset, and I just pause and I think, you’re alive. You’re here. And I chuckle,” Ward tells SurvivorNet. “I’ll be angry and I’ll chuckle, and it’ll just kind of wipe it all away. You just get so overwhelmed by trying to live years and years of life into what could possibly be a short amount of time, and it just kind of hits you. When that window of time feels just crushing, it can be very crippling.”
One thing that helps her is realizing that as long as she can handle today, then she can handle anything. “And what helped me was this little mantra that has to do with that. And it was, I’m not going to die today and I’m not going to die tomorrow. And that was it. And as long as I knew that to be true, I knew that I could handle anything.”
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