Louise DeCelis was just a typical mum, with two beautiful kids, running a successful business with her husband in Sydney, when everything changed in an instant.
At just 39, Louise was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer in June 2017.
She’s documented her battle to survive on a blog about her cancer journey, describing the emotional depths she’s experienced. There’s no doubt Louise is a fighter. In just over a year, she’s endured 24 rounds of radiotherapy and six rounds of chemotherapy, emergency hospital trips and a mastectomy – all to be told the cancer had metastasised to the liver and bones.
Louise, mum to Evie, four, and Noah, five, described her devastation in a Facebook post this week, linking to her latest heartbreaking blog post.
“Dear family and friends, the time has come for us to ask for your help,” she writes.
“I want to ask for your help. Help with a fundraiser to generate the funds required to afford the treatments I need. And for my family to live comfortably with me, wherever in the world we land for treatment.”
Explaining that she has aggressive metastatic cancer, Louise is appealing to the community for their support.
“For us now the stakes couldn’t be any higher,” she says.
Her cancer has been labelled terminal, but for Louise, that’s an unacceptable word – which is why she’s determined to travel anywhere in the world to find the right treatment.
“We have sought out the best international doctors and clinics who specialise in my type of cancer,” the blog post continues, but she adds, the cost is unaffordable.
“Treatment facilities and hospitals overseas are hundreds of thousands of dollars and that is without medical issue or travel and relocation costs. The best diagnostic gene profiling and chemosensitivity tests run from $5500-$10,000… per test! We’ve spent $40,000+ in just the four months since the metastatic diagnosis in July.”
Louise then states that she’s appealing for help, because she has one reason for living: her kids.
“Having cancer as a mum hits you in a place so deep, so raw and so terrifying that it’s impossible to describe,” she writes.
"What I want most is to see my babies grow up and to know they are not suffering the loss of their mum.
"The thought of not being there for them growing up is a place I try not to imagine. I want to see what beautiful people they become. I worry they won’t remember me. They haven’t lost their innocence to cancer yet and I hope they never have to."
Louise is undoubtedly asking for assistance for the sake of her children, as any mother would.
"I feel extremely lucky that we can ask for help without pride or ego getting in the way. After all, this could happen to any of us, it’s a conversation that many of us will need to have, and I hope that it makes it just that little easier now we have paved the way."
The family is holding a fundraising event in December to raise funds for further treatment.
Top Comments
Sadly Louise’s story is not uncommon. I myself am living with metastatic breast cancer and have two young school-aged kids. Unfortunately there are no statistics for the number of women living with MBC, however we do know that around 3,000 women (and men also) die of this disease each year in Australia. During the October month of breast cancer awareness so much attention is given to early breast cancer survivorship, that those living with MBC often feel left out. No one wants to hear about the ugly truth that cancer death rates among those with MBC have not changed in 30 years, despite increased survival rates amongst early breast cancer patients. Often only a small percentage of money raised actually goes to research for metastatic breast cancer. This needs to change. Love your Sister is only one of the charity groups that I am aware of that donate 100% of money to mbc research.
Small correction: a heck of a lot of funding goes into MBC research; indeed most of the big landmark trials of effective new therapeutics took place in metastatic patients long before they were used in the early disease setting (eg Herceptin). LYS funds the Connie Johnson Lab at the Garvan, which conducts a lot of pre-clinical studies that will have positive implications for both metastatic and early disease.