One of the worst days of my life was the day I came home from school and mum and dad told me that mum had cancer.

 "Every single part of a cancer experience is hard and no-one can ever tell you any differently."

When mum first started feeling sick she went to the doctor to try to find out what was wrong. The doctor that she was seeing told her for 5 months that she had a chest infection, gave her anti-biotics and told her to go home and rest, without once sending her for any x-rays or any further investigation. The last time she went to him she told him that it hurt to breathe. His reply to that was “then don’t breathe”. She went to another doctor after that and he sent her for an x-ray of her chest. At first the doctor thought she just had an abscess on her lung, but later found out she had lung cancer.

Mum had to be flown to Sydney where she went to hospital for her treatment. She had an operation, in which she had 2/3 of her right lung removed along with radiation therapy and chemotherapy to get rid of the tumour. While Dad was in Sydney with Mum, our grandma came up to Coffs from Victoria to look after my brother and I so we could still go to school. We went for a month before we saw Mum again, which was a big surprise for her. Our aunty and uncle that lived in Sydney drove up to Coffs so that we could surprise Mum in hospital.

"The whole time she was there, I was terrified."

I thought she was going to die. When she came home, she was in remission but even though she no longer had cancer, she was still in pain every day and was incapable of doing so much she used to be able to do. Mum was not herself anymore. Although cancer is hard, there are good and bad things that come out of it. I know you’re thinking “what good can come out of cancer?” The truest saying I ever heard is what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. I have been able to deal with my own illness because I saw my mum fight through her cancer and I had to deal with it myself.

"I think the hardest part of cancer is the not knowing what is happening and watching the person with cancer in pain every day."

After all the pain and heartache of the first time around, in 2006, Mum was told her cancer had come back in her other lung this time. This time around, there was no chance of operation because of the large amount of her other lung that had been taken. The only options this time was radiation therapy and chemotherapy, which they were going to combine.

She went to Sydney for the planning of the radiation therapy and once there, they discovered that she had a hole in her oesophagus, so she couldn’t have that anymore as it would have damaged other parts of her body.All that was left was chemotherapy.

The first kind of chemo she had was the same as the chemo she had the first time she had cancer. It didn’t work. So there was a new chemo that they thought they would try which worked for the first 4 or 5 treatments, then stopped working. There were no options left and Mum was told there was nothing else that they could do for her. She passed away after a week in hospital in the early hours of the morning of 9th September 2006.

"When you’re trying to deal with cancer, you may need to try different things before you find something that will help."

I think it is a personal thing but I find the beach to be very calming. Writing poetry helps me and so does music. Some people exercise or do relaxation. The best thing to do is try different things until you find something that helps. Everything changes when cancer is involved, most for the bad, but some for the good. It gives you something to fight for, it gives you something to try for, it makes you want to be the best person you can be as soon as humanly possible, just in case.

If Mum hadn’t fought so hard for her family, how would I have gone, when 11 months after my mum passed away, I was fighting for my own life and almost losing? I have a life threatening auto immune disease, which makes my immune system attack my organs. To stop my immune system from attacking my body, my immune system has to be taken away, which means I have had chemotherapy now as well. My disease cannot be cured although I can be in remission, and just hope to stay that way. But my Mum was the biggest reason for me to fight. Apart from the fact that if I gave up without a fight Mum would have killed me again, I wanted to make her proud of how strong I am and how well I can deal with everything life throws at me.

When Mum died, I threw myself into work so I didn’t have to think about it all the time. I didn’t know how else to deal with life without Mum. But without her fighting the way she did, I probably wouldn’t be here telling this story. I found joining Canteen was a real help for me and it has been great for making new friends who know what I was going through.