Patty's hairdresser noticed something unusual on her scalp. It was stage four breast cancer.

What Patty Bolle thought was a run-of-the-mill trip to the hairdresser, turned out to be a replay of some horrifying news she received 13 years ago.

13 years ago, Patty was diagnosed with breast cancer after discovering a lump in her breast. After that, she underwent chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery in a determined effort to rid herself of the tumour.

And she did. Patty thought she’d beat the cancer altogether – the cancer that plagued her for so long.

But last year, Patty’s heart dropped as her hairdresser noticed something on her scalp.

“Nikki was pulling my hair up and she said, ‘Oh my God, you have a bald spot there,’ and I said, ‘I do?’ So she showed me in the mirror and I went, ‘I had no idea,'” Patty said in an interview with WILX News.

“It was just about bigger than a dime size, and it looked like it had been burned. It was kind of red and splotchy and so I asked her if she burned it and she said no and I kind of poked it a little bit and asked if it was sensitive and she said no,” Patty's hairdresser Nikki said.

Patty went straight to her doctor, who revealed the bald spot was a sign her breast cancer had returned and metastasised - with even greater force than before.

A PET scan of her scalp showed her cancer was at stage four, meaning it had regenerated and spread to different parts of her body.

Despite the possibility for the tumour to resurface anywhere on her body, metastatic breast cancer rarely shows on the scalp, where the more common areas doctors will check are the breasts, brain, liver, and lungs.

But Patty warns others that entire body checks are crucial.

“You wouldn’t go to a physical and they wouldn’t pick through your hair and see if anything is out of the ordinary. They tell you to look for freckles and moles on your body but nobody looks at your scalp,” she said.

Patty has started taking oral drugs to kill the cancerous cells and fight cancer once more.