At simply 25, Kellie Gardner was relishing each second of it motherhood along with her new child daughter.
However simply months after giving start to little Sophia, the mum’s world got here crashing down.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Mum’s gut-wrenching prognosis.
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She was given a gut-wrenching bowel cancer diagnosis after a tumor the dimensions of a tennis ball was present in her colon.
A year-and-a-half later – simply as her life was beginning to look promising – the fiancée of AFL star Jeremy Finlayson was informed she now has stage 4 most cancers in her lung.
“I am devastated,” Kellie, now 26, tells 7Life of the lung prognosis in early January.
“A month in the past I might have informed you I am hopeful, however proper now all I really feel is heartbreak and worry.
“Realizing what I am about to undergo once more sends me right into a deep state of PTSD.
“I am scared as a result of though I do know what I am about to endure to a degree, I do not know what the recurrence means for my future.”
Earlier than her shock prognosis, Kellie, initially from Port Lincolnwas on vacation in Sydney when she met her now-fiancé.
The couple welcomed a “stunning” child woman named Sophia on the Gold Coast in August 2021.
Simply three months after the family-of-three relocated to South Australia, Kellie started noticing a variety of seemingly “regular” signs – however she put them all the way down to motherhood.
“Being a brand new mum, a variety of issues felt off,” Kellie explains.
“I used to be drained, I had pains in my abdomen, my bowel actions had modified and I used to be shedding weight – all very ‘regular’ signs for a brand new mum.”
However she knew one thing wasn’t proper when she noticed blood in her stools.
“After just a few days of it occurring often, Jeremy informed me to go see a physician to see if it was nonetheless regular, and to cease counting on Dr Google,” she says.
After seeing a GP, Kellie was booked in for a colonoscopy simply two weeks later.
“My feminine GP took me critically,” she remembers.
“She agreed that whereas most of my signs had been undoubtedly in keeping with being within the fourth trimester, or post-partum, if I used to be involved, there was doubtless one thing extra severe occurring.”
After waking up from the process, Kellie was delivered the devastating information.
“The physician spoke an entire heap of medical phrases I nonetheless to today do not perceive however I positive as hell knew the sentence, ‘That is what most cancers seems to be like’,” she remembers.
“I instantly shut down. I gave him no response. I requested no questions aside from for the nurse to take my cannula out of my arm so I may go away.
“This was now my least favourite place and I needed nothing to do with anybody who was there.
“There are actually no phrases to explain how I really feel after being informed I’ve a probably terminal illness.
“Most cancers is one thing I connect to those that are 60 years or over, not a 25-year-old simply beginning her life.”
Together with her then-three-month-old woman in her arms, Kellie could not assist however marvel about how extraordinarily younger she was when she was identified with colorectal most cancers, an sickness that develops from the interior lining of the bowel.
Based on Cancer Council Australiait is estimated that greater than 15,700 folks had been identified with bowel most cancers in 2022, a illness commonest in folks 50 and over.
“Being identified at 25 is such a younger age,” Kellie says.
“Though what was going via my thoughts when most cancers was first being launched to me and turning into my actuality was extra that I could not go away my companion as a single father.
“I did not need to miss my woman’s first birthday and I did not need to lose my hair.”
Over the previous 12 months, Kellie says she has met an rising variety of bowel most cancers sufferers of their 20s and 30s.
“And that is only one kind of most cancers,” she says.
“It’s a unhappy actuality however it’s one which so many younger persons are dealing with.
“It is turning into a lot extra frequent and it is scary as hell.”
Her largest problem was not with the ability to take pleasure in motherhood as she had hoped.
“I’ve been dropping myself, and lacking the chance to be a mum the best way each little woman at all times goals,” she explains.
“My first 12 months of motherhood was taken from me so all of the sudden and so aggressively that I nonetheless grieve the times I’ve missed.
“Clearly remedy was exhausting. It was actually killing me to be able to kill the most cancers that was thriving in my bowel.
“But it surely wasn’t simply killing cells, it was additionally killing my soul.
“And whereas I used to be preventing day by day to get higher bodily, I used to be additionally preventing mentally to be able to be the perfect mum I presumably might be, given the circumstances.”
Kellie has undergone a number of CTs, MRIs and PET scans, colonoscopies, surgical procedures and coverings – together with radiotherapy and grueling rounds of chemotherapy.
“I’ve had a colostomy the place they diverted my bowels to a bag on my abdomen as my tumor had prompted an obstruction in my bowel and I used to be now not capable of empty my bowels the standard approach,” she explains.
“The newest (process) was reattaching my bowel and placing it again inside my stomach in order that I may be taught to begin passing stools the standard approach once more.”
In mid-January, Kellie was informed her most cancers had unfold to her lung.
“I haven’t got a lot of an concept of what the following few months will seem like for me,” she explains.
“Previous to this, we thought I had a fairly excessive probability that we had finished every little thing we may, medically, to present me the perfect probability of this not occurring.
“That is the factor with stage 4 most cancers – it’s a terminal sickness and all we will do is handle it.”
Hope for milestones
As she continues to obtain remedy, Kellie hopes she will hit a few of the main milestones in her life – together with seeing little Sophia develop up.
“The medical doctors are doing every little thing they presumably can to make sure that I am nonetheless right here for my wedding ceremony in October and, much more importantly, I see my daughter at her personal wedding ceremony in 20 years time,” she says.
“I am not solely positive what the result can be.
“However I suppose the hope is to shrink or at the least preserve the most cancers that’s already current… That is only a teeny actuality of getting a terminal sickness.”
For these going via most cancers, Kellie suggests: “Let your self really feel.
“Enable your self to be unhappy, to hate the world and to query ‘Why me’.
“But in addition let the voices of help construct you up and encourage you to maintain shifting ahead.
“As a younger mum specifically, use that stunning little miracle as inspiration, let him or she be your rock.
“Let the folks round you help you – allow them to do the cooking, cleansing, no matter it could be that they provide, please allow them to.
“You’ll be able to’t do all of it, not on this occasion. At some point you can however proper now, allow them to.”
She additionally urges others to look out for indicators of bowel points.
“You’d quite be cautious than discover out just a few years down the observe that you may have caught it in its early phases,” she says.
“Hearken to your physique! We’re nothing with out our well being.”
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