Fighting for life: How 2014 Changed Everything

I’m going to tell you my story how we survived. “We,” you ask? Well, that “we” is who it’s always been: my mum and I.

2014 had started off pretty damn great. I was starting my first year as a university student; my mother had a great job as Operations Manager at a community transport company. I had started dating my first girlfriend at the time. Life couldn’t be any sweeter.

However, March of 2014 set off a series of unfortunate events that Lemony Snicket couldn’t have predicted. My mother, Jenna, had a foot operation that caused the bones within her left innermost toe to completely crumble, which led to emergency fusion surgery.

Now, being a carer for a woman in a wheelchair isn’t too hard, as long as the person in the wheelchair actually wants to stay in the confinement of said chair. After two months, her feet recovered from initial surgery, Jenna needed to have a colonoscopy on what the doctors thought were hemorrhoids. This was caused by blood-thinning injections taken due to complications by the previous surgery.

Now I know it’s TMI for a lot of people. However, due to this being a critical part of the story, I hope you can let this one slide.

I picked her up after surgery and took her home, as we were expecting my brother and his wife to visit mum after surgery. Everything seemed fine. They arrived. We had lunch together. We talked the breeze and watched AFL. Everything that family symbolizes in today’s modern society was right there in our living room.

With 1 in 2 Australians to be diagnosed with cancer during their lives, we should really be expecting that someone close to you, in your family even, may be diagnosed with cancer at some point. Well, our time was now.

“Boys, I have something to tell you, I have bowel cancer.”

Mum Jenna and I