Artist beats 11-year melanoma battle with new treatment in Charlotte

CHARLOTTE — It was almost too late for a man in Charlotte who waited years to get a mole on his leg checked out; then came an 11-year battle with melanoma.

But a new targeted treatment offered in Charlotte ended up turning things around, so Channel 9’s Hunter Sáenz met with Kevin Spencer to learn about his journey.

If you step inside Spencer’s art studio, the outside world softens.

“It’s kind of like my little space to be creative,” Spencer said. “This is just my way to express myself.”

There’s the smell of paint, the unfinished ideas, and the unmistakable feeling that healing is happening.

“This is where I felt like I was always drowning, because it kept coming back,” Spencer told Sáenz about one painting.

The “it” that Spencer referred to was cancer.

“I noticed on my left shin, there was a mole growing. And I didn’t really think anything of it. It was small. But over the years, I guess it was just getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and then to the point where it was really noticeable,” Spencer said.

He lived in Los Angeles at the time, working as a makeup artist. He worked on other people’s skin all of the time; finally, he decided to check up on his own.

“I went in to get a biopsy and they’re like, we’re pretty sure this is melanoma. We’re going to just cut the whole thing out right there,” Spencer said. “I was just going to get a biopsy, then I had a four-hour surgery on it, taking it out.”

Spencer was left with a scar, but he was cancer-free for four years.

“All of a sudden, it came back in my lymph node,” Spencer said.

They found the cancer during a routine check-up. This time, he was diagnosed with stage-four melanoma.

“When you hear that, it’s like, I’m going to die. You know, basically, your life flashes in front of you so many times,” Spencer said.

Years of infusions sent the cancer into remission again, only for it to return a third time, just as Spencer was planning to move to Charlotte.

“In early stages, it’s very treatable, but once it has spread to the lymph nodes or beyond, it becomes much more challenging to treat,” said Dr. Malcolm Hart-Squires, a surgical oncologist with Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute.

Spencer met Hart-Squires at Atrium Health, where they took a “somewhat targeted approach.”

“Melanoma, like a lot of cancers we’re learning, has a specific signature that differs from one patient to the next,” Hart-Squires told Sáenz.

They tested to see if Spencer’s melanoma had a specific mutation they could target, and it did.

“And we were able to put him on a regimen to target that specific mutation in his melanoma that seemingly has worked incredibly well for him,” Hart-Squires said.

Spencer, now in his early 60s, has been cancer-free since February, allowing him to continue doing what he loves.

“Hummingbirds I would see outside my window, and they’re very healing,” he said.

He’s now painting a future that he once wondered if he’d live long enough to create.

Doctors say that men often neglect getting their routine skin checks. They urge everyone to do it once a year. If caught early, 90% of melanomas are treatable with surgery alone. Currently, it’s the sixth-most diagnosed form of cancer.

©2026 Cox Media Group