Life Uncut - A Terminal Diagnosis at Twenty Five - Uncut with Kellie Finlayson

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Hey Lifers, Today we kick off the episode by celebrating Laura's 37th birthday! She's got some feelings about turning 37 and they're not the feelings that you might expect. We talk about judging parents of young children for allowing them screen time and have a bit of a silly discussion about why we view women's sex toys as 'empowering' but men's sex toys as gross and creepy! Then we are joined by the wonderful Kellie Finlayson. Kellie Finlayson was 25 and had a beautiful 3 month old daughter with her partner Jeremy, when their world turned upside down.Kellie was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer.After spending a large part of her daughter's life in hospital and a horrific experience with chemo, Kellie beat her cancer. But then months later Kellie found out that her cancer had spread to her lungs. Kellie is now on a mission to spread awareness of bowel cancer, especially in young people. You can follow her journey here: https://www.instagram.com/kelliefinlayson_/ If you loved the episode, please share it with someone you care about, particularly if they've been dismissing a health concern that they've got. Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because we love love! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode was recorded on Darug Wollamutta land. Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany. And I'm Laura, and today's episode, look, we really cover the whole gamut. We talk about some very silly things. We talk about a new blowjob machine called the Autoblow AI+,

but we also have an incredibly important conversation with a beautiful woman named Kelly Flinlayson. We are talking about Kelly's battle with bowel cancer. Kelly's such an incredible person, but she's on a mission to raise awareness for early detection. Yeah, and I think one of the big take-homes for me is bowel cancer is something that I have always attributed to being an old person's problem.

Kelly was only 25 when she was diagnosed with bowel cancer. She was also diagnosed three months after having her little beautiful baby girl, Sophia. But one of the things that I think is the most incredible part of Kelly's story is just her unbelievable positivity, her resilience, and her determination to beat this cancer. Guess whose birthday it was on the weekend? Whose?

Not mine, and there's only one other person in the room. Probably someone famous. Famous? Please. I mean, probably someone famous out there, but it was also yours. Do you know what? I feel like if you follow me on Instagram, you would probably know because I went hard this year.

I was like, you know what, everyone, it's my birthday, and I never do that because I never celebrate birthdays. It was the big three zero, so congratulations on it. 30 again, everyone. The 30th for the seventh time. Not even. I am 37. I'm a proud 37-year-old.

And the reason why I think this year I was so across Instagram, I was so like, it's my birthday is because I think it's the first year. This is a bit self-indulgent, but I feel so happy. I feel so indulgent, so happy. I feel so content with being 37. I think other years I've been like, oh, God, 36. What does that mean? Who am I?

I don't know. This year I was just like, yeah, I'm 37 and my boobs are much lower than they were the year prior. It's so funny because it does happen as you get older. So as you're aging in your 20s towards 30, you start to get a bit petrified of what's going to happen in the next decade, like all of a sudden your life is over. But then when you're in your 30s, it gets easier every year because you get more comfortable with who you are.

I think you start caring a lot less. I think you're more open to just going after what you want in life, being content, finding your happiness. I think it changes. The way you feel and the way you look at age changes as you get older. I don't know. That's what's happening to me. I agree, but I think we're sold a very different story.

I think from when I was in my 20s, I was told that, well, as you get older, every year gets worse and worse. You should be more and more fearful as that time and clock ticks by. And now look, I'm 37. I'm not turning 100. But I think I genuinely think every year for me has gotten better and better. And it's not because of any achievements that I've made. It's not because of like work or anything like that.

It's because I feel more comfortable. I'm so much less judgmental on myself. And it's such a crazy thing because you look back on your 20s and you're like, I was so fit. All the things that I would think now that I would want to have, I had them in my 20s and I was insecure. And now I'm 37 and I truly and honestly do not care. I'm going to.

And I feel great. Yeah, I'm going to actually change what I just said. Well, I'm not going to change it, but I'm going to add to it. I do. We can edit it out. So Brittany, I do agree with you. No, I don't want to edit it. But I think I think now I want to add to it.

I definitely do think it's an age thing that you do get more comfortable as you grow. but I think it also comes with where you are at in life. So I don't want to group everyone that's aging in their 30s to be, you know, you get happier every year. It's definitely if you feel like you have what you always thought you wanted. Now what I mean by that is you have a beautiful relationship and you have your kids and you've got a work that you love so you feel very comfortable and whole with your life.

There are a lot of people out there that every year is going by and they might not have their kids yet that they've always wanted or they might not have found, quote, unquote, their soulmate and maybe those birthdays don't hit the same and I say that because I've done that in the past too I'm a lot more comfortable now with aging I still am nowhere near with what I want to have in terms of family life and things like that but there's a level of acceptance but I know there's a lot of other people out there listening right now that are like well fuck that you know I'm 37 and I don't have my child yet so it definitely is dependent on your situation I am so glad you

said that because I think for me I'm at a point in life where maybe I guess I used to care a lot what other people thought of me and that used to be a really big dictator of my happiness even if in textbook I was where I thought I was supposed to be I'd leveled up to whatever metric I had placed for myself my care for how other people viewed me really affected me and I think that with age I care less and less what people think of me you know you always have to care to some extent but don't leave us bad reviews we still care we care all right I take it back no but like I think that it's just this level of self-acceptance, but I absolutely agree, Britt. Maybe if I wasn't at a point or if I didn't have the things that I always wanted,

maybe I wouldn't feel that way. I still care what people think, not as much for it to bother me, but mine is more accepting of the fact that sometimes life's journey for us, and I don't like the word journey, but the path that we take. Let's go with it. I'll lean into it. Let's lean into it. The journey and the path that we have been given might not be the one we had planned. And with that acceptance comes a little bit of reprieve from the stress and the pressure of I'm at this age and I don't have what I want. Cause man, I thought I would have three houses, a husband, five dogs, two kids. Who the fuck thought they were going to have three houses in this climate? Jesus Christ. No, when I was 20, I was like, I'm setting myself a goal at 30 years

old. All I wanted to do was hustle, be a property mogul. I literally remember saying to my boyfriend, I wanted to have four kids. I want to be a young mom. I'm 36 nearly this year. I'm 36 and I'm like a hurricane but my comfort now comes from the acceptance of the future and follow the path I want to take now I really want to reiterate that I think especially as women that we are sold that age is such a defining factor on who we are and our value like this idea that as we get older we become more invisible that what we can contribute and who we are as people is less and less valuable and I think job opportunities dry up relationship opportunities dry up that's what we're told when we're in our 20s yeah we're told to be all that we're supposed to fret as each year

rolls by that we're supposed to be a little bit less like no one's supposed to go into their 40s being like I'm turning 40 and that's great we've been sold that that's not how you should approach aging and I think it takes a real mindset shift to each year be like you know what I'm so happy to be here and actually it was something that Matt's mum said so Matt's mum she's 72 Ellie we love Ellie fucking phenomenal I love my mother-in-law I hit the mother-in-law jackpot but she made a comment she was like gosh you know how old I'm turning this year and I was like what she's like 72 that's wild she's like I'm 72 and she's like you know you know what no one wants to be 72 she's like no one unless you're 71 then you really fucking want to be 72 and then you want to

be 73 it's so true it's so true anyway that was it I had a beautiful weekend with the kids we went up to Koolingatta, Kingscliff area. We did literally everything. It used to be. We literally did not stop. We did every single thing you could possibly do in that area. It used to be that, like, prior to my birthday I'd just go out and smash margaritas and that would be how I would celebrate.

And now we go to things like Fruit World and take the kids macadamia nut picking. What did you think of the area? What did you think of Cooley and that area in Queensland? Because I often think about moving there. I haven't told you that, but I often think about moving that way. No. Stop trying to live life separate to me.

Is Scotland not cool? Scotland is an absolute, Ben is living here. Actually, speaking of Scotland, Britt leaves in two days to go to Scotland. I am heading to Scotland. And you don't have to say Scotland like that every time you say it. I actually can't say it without that. Like it's a visceral reaction. I have to be Scotland.

So literally as we sat down to record this episode, the first thing Britt says just before we turned the mics on was, I can't believe I'm gonna have sex in two days I can't fucking wait let's talk about that for a second that was off my clora sometimes we have a friendship conversation happy birthday to you Brittany Hockley yeah it's not my birthday until August but I'm gonna have a pre-birthday celebration in two days what are you most looking forward to sex yeah but what part of it no let's get into this no of course I'm not look if I just wanted sex I wouldn't be in a long distance relationship I would just be with someone down the road that I could have sex with all the

time I love Ben I love him when I'm with him I feel amazing and he makes me feel like I'm blushing right now I'm so cute I feel like I'm 18 I feel like I'm 18 right now no but I love this early feeling in a relationship and you often forget you miss it until you have it again the feeling of just like like what I just said when I'm like I'm blushing and I feel like I'm 17 again I still get really excited at the thought of seeing him and talking to him and maybe that's why I do long distance relationships because I just want to hold on to that feeling forever. Well, that's the thing, right? Like when you're in a long distance relationship, that is prolonged because normally. Oh, we'll never know if we actually hate each other.

We'll never know. We'll never figure it out. Until you're actually together and then it's too late. You spend so many years committing, you're solved. I'm like 55 and I'm like, damn it, when I finally live with him. We're actually completely incompatible. No, but do you know what? I'm actually really looking forward to, jokes aside, sex aside, what can't wait for sex i'm really looking forward to that connection and intimacy physically without the sex just like affection have someone cuddle you laying bed and fall asleep with someone the little like kisses that just that little having someone around you that doesn't even have to be touching you but the feeling of having someone in your house and near you even if you're

not talking i've lived alone for so long so i often miss that and i don't need that constant talk so sometimes i like to just be in the same room as someone i mean it's a very different type of connection that you get and a type of comfort that you get from like your intimate partner like friends can fill the cup friends can fill the void but I think you don't feel me like Ben oh that was good I had to the opportunity was there I will yes I'll fill a lot of other ones but yeah I'll leave that one to Ben I don't ever want you to fill my cup I'll end that way either Laura in all seriousness though there's a big part of me and it's probably wrong to say it but Ben really looks after me and when I'm there and I'm with him I feel like I just don't have to think

of anything because I feel like in my day-to-day life I have to do everything because I live alone but like when something's broken I fix it I have to think about all the bills I have to think about paying this doing this cleaning this buying this whatever whatever it is it's just everything in the one household so it's really nice to have somebody you know we run our business and we're constantly making the decisions when I'm there he just looks after me so well and I just feel like I relax. I know that he's going to help me out. I know he's going to do things for me because he does. He goes above and beyond. And there's a really selfish part of me that just like, can't wait to do that. You're like, I'm going to be on a mental holiday. Oh, I just lay in the

lounge. Lots of sex. No wonder you can't wait for it. He's like, what else can I bring you? Fuck me, feed me and do everything. Massage me, love me, fuck me, feed me and I'm happy girl. But you know what? Okay. I mean, going back to my weekend for a second, because there's something I wanted to talk to you about because I've realized actually, I'm not going to say that I'm the mum that I thought I would never be, but I dealt with something on the weekend after posting to Instagram. I dealt with some backlash and a wonderful troll told me what a shit parent I was and I kind of wanted to talk about it.

Oh, you got mum shamed? I got mum shamed hardcore. So I put up a post yesterday, put up a post on Sunday, and it was Matt and I going out for a date night for dinner. But obviously we were away with the kids and so we didn't have babysitters, so we brought the kids to date night. I thought you were about to say, So we just left the kids at home.

Well, no, apparently you can't do that when they're three and two. We brought them to date night and also because it was like my birthday dinner. But to be fair, they probably weren't particularly in the mood to go out for dinner. They would have liked to have just eaten at the hotel and gone to bed. But you know what? I was like, it's my last night. I want to go out for a dinner. It was a super early dinner.

It was 6 p.m. It's not like we're going out having rages when we've got the kids with us. Totally. The sun will still up. But you know what? Every so often when you take the kids out for dinner and you just want to have a conversation with your partner, You just want to sit down and have an adult conversation

where the two of you are speaking to each other and you're not running around after your children because, trust me, Lola does not stay in her seat. She will be in her seat for 10 minutes and then she's climbing out and the only way to stop her from distracting everybody else is to give them your 100% focus, which means there's no point in going out for dinner anyway because you don't actually get to speak to each other.

You may as well just stay at home. So I brought a friend along with me. I brought their iPads. you did what i did i brought their ipads and i set them up at dinner you are the worst such a neglectful you were so neglectful and you know what i always thought when i like before i had kids i was like i will never be the parent that distracts my children with screens i will never be the parent that brings an ipad with me but then you become a parent and you realize how absolutely judgmental that is because sometimes you just need help i don't know one of my friends

that have kids that didn't say that. Every single person I know that had a kid is like, I am never going to be that mom. My kid's going to go outside and play. They're going to play with toys, wooden toys, not plastic. You know, everyone has this idea. And of course that's great, but it doesn't work in reality. Everyone wants to be the best possible parent that they can be. Reality is a different thing. You have that child that's 24 seven and you do need an hour of reprieve sometimes. And if that means they sit there and watch Bluey or whatever else it is, I think it's okay as long as it's not a 24-7 thing yeah but I think also when you say that you know everyone wants to be the best parent that they can be I still feel like people I'm

sure there are parents who rely too heavily on iPads and screen time because it's an easy distractor I've got no doubt that they exist but I would say the majority of parents still want to be the best parents that they can be most people are very conscious and cognizant of the impact of iPads and the impact of letting kids just sit on screens for too long even if it is so easy to do I think giving people the benefit of the doubt majority of parents want to do a really good job but I posted this yesterday and this was my photo to Instagram and this was the caption barely post all month and triple dumps in one day because I put three pictures up in one day I did yeah I went wild anyway hold me back and then the rest of it was date night except with a couple of

overtired hooligans and their iPads because tonight I'd love to get through a single conversation without chasing a toddler through the restaurant yelling get back in your chair so you actually owned it you owned the fact that you're like I know that I'm giving them an iPad so you like tried to pre-out the trolls from coming oh yeah no I wasn't even pre-outing the trolls I was just owning the fact that like literally 90% of parents will do it from time to time and that it's okay and I think sometimes you know having these relatable parenting moments where you see somebody else who's on Instagram you know we had our kids we took them to so many activities that day sometimes you can look at how other people are parenting and you think oh god why do they

have it so easy and I also think it's important to show the shade that it's definitely not easy for us either like we absolutely have our moments with our kids so what did she come at you with why take kids to a date night maybe the rest of the date nights would have a better time and then there was some back and forth and then this person oh you responded no no I didn't respond other people did oh I made it a rule to not bring my children on date nights luxury has nothing to do with it respect for other people has everything to do with it but then again I was taught that as a child and then it goes on to say as a parent i actually spoke to my children we didn't put things in their hands to entertain them and now my child has respect for people too the audacity

i was pretty irate by this because i think i can actually imagine because i know you well the reason why it got me so fired up is because it comes down to this one reoccurring thing that i see the only people that i ever see shaming mums for doing a shit job in their eyes are other mums who have already done it it's other mums who hold people up to the standard and say like you're not doing it the way I did it and so therefore you're doing it wrong and I guess like when I look at that I think you know it's not dads are not shaming mums people who don't have kids are not shaming mums it's other mums and I don't understand why we do it to each other no and I mean just to really reiterate that not that long ago when we had Rebel Wilson on the podcast and

she was talking about being mum shamed so she I mean she's got a platform of say 12 million followers so hers would be next level right she said the same thing she said out of if you look you know statistically at how many people follow her she's like it is all mums and women when you go on their pages she's like it's never a man that comes on to shame us I wonder why it's hard for me I'm not a mum but I wonder why that is where does that judgmental attitude come from I think it comes back to a bit of internalized misogyny I think it comes back to this idea that as mothers we should be sacrificial, that we should be doing everything for our children. And that if you prioritize yourself at the expense of your child, that you're then putting them at a deficit.

And I think because that has been ingrained in us for so long, that when you see a mom step outside of that, when you see them do something that you think, oh, I would never do that, then instantly that reaction, well, I wouldn't say that's for everyone. We're so quick to make judgment on something was one paragraph it's one comment it's one picture you know you make judgment based on one instance in time and that informs your opinion of that entire person or the entire way that they parent it just comes back full circle you can have grand plans and think you're going to be a specific person in any aspect of life you're going to go into a relationship or parenting or a job in a certain way and life has other plans for you things change on top of that

we're in a different generation now. We're our generation. I mean, iPads and technology wasn't really around, but now your kids are almost at a disadvantage going into school if they don't know how to use those things. And I hate to say that because I wish we lived in a world where the kids did just play and they didn't have to be online. But a lot of schools now, this blew my mind, a lot of schools don't even have chalk anymore, like a chalkboard. You know how you used to write on a chalkboard? What? Yes. They use projectors from an iPad and they all have iPads and it's a whole nother world some kids don't even know what chalk is laura yeah everybody gets screwed because of technology but also will be well well connected and all super lonely not a nice segue

but i want to talk about blowjobs that is a very weird segue from going from um mum shaming to blowjobs that's what we do here it's because brit will be giving a few of them this weekend definitely not like this wait till i tell you this now i have just shown you a photo laura but there's a new it's called auto blow and it's it's ai this is the fucking weirdest segue like let me talk about uh look it's a fleshlight that we're going to be talking about it's ai it's artificial intelligence in a blowjob so it's a masturbation tool for men it's a fleshlight but it's a fancy fleshlight well it's a fleshlight on steroids like this thing i'm going to first of all before we talk about what it does i'm going to describe it to you when i first saw it i really got soda

stream vibe you got soda stream and i got soft serve machine it looks like a soft serve so it's like a little if you guys know what soft serve or uh like a soda stream where you put the thing in so it's like a little contraption it's pretty narrow like i don't know how tall it is maybe 20 centimeters you know what we're gonna put a picture of it on our instagram we'll put a picture but then i would not he's just looking at me like can you please not put this on our instagram then It looks like it has this material, like this soft silicone at the top, then a long dildo-y tube, then it's got some screws and some locks and I would not want this thing anywhere near my dick if I had a penis.

But what it is is it has a silicone mouth sleeve. It is a masturbation tool for the penis. It goes into it like a vagina but it has a remote control and it has all these voice command and it has all these different types of blowjob techniques. So it goes, this soft serve part goes up and down, goes around, changes the tightness, does all this blowjob stuff. I feel like you've never seen a flashlight before because you just described a flashlight.

Yeah, but no, because flashlights aren't remote controlled and don't do blowjobs. Flashlights is just, it feels like a nice, tight, warm apple pie. Yeah. So normally I feel like with, okay, this is really getting descriptive. If you've never seen a flashlight, this might be foreign to you. A lot of them are manual. so a guy would just get hard stick his penis in it and then bang it up and down you know and and that's what feels and simulates being inside someone it's just like using a dildo like it's

manual you still have to do it it's the same thing for a man so they get their fleshlight they still have to manually do it so the thing that's different about this is it has almost like a clamp that clamps down on the penis and it's the clamp that moves i'm making clamp sounds very visceral but it's like well there's screws on it yeah it's like it is technically like a plastic clamp but now the thing that is also quite interesting about this don't know why we're talking about it still but we're going to keep on going down that track is that it comes with different sleeves so you can choose a vagina sleeve you can choose an anal sleeve or you can choose a mouth sleeve they are sold separately yes not included in the cost must buy separately

can use together so you can experience a different sensation and it has this ai technology now so you can literally speak to your fleshlight and tell it to go down on you in different ways so it'll perform more of a sucking motion more of a suck and twist motion whatever it is some people like different you know different strokes for different folks that literally applies in this in this instance it has 10 blowjob experiences 10 speeds per experience and the edge button to pause your blowjob at any time so you can edge yourself theoretically this is brilliant but why is it Now, this is a conversation that we were all having off air between ourselves, producer Keisha, Laura and myself.

Why is it that there is something about this that's a bit creepy? Because it's just a masturbation tool, right? Why does it feel a little bit off? Okay, I feel like for me, and we were having a laugh about this, like this is how this came up. We were laughing about this autoblow AI plus thing and we were like, why does this exist? but i think the real question is why do we see female sex toys sex toys like dildos and vibrators

as this almost empowering movement we see sex toys for women like one they don't usually look like body parts they're usually like quite pretty and almost especially on social media now like women posing with their dildos we see it as kind of a take on female sexual empowerment if a guy was to post a photo on social media posing with his fleshlight would we feel the same would we see it as empowering I don't think so which makes me think that we see male masturbation tools and female masturbation tools very very differently and we put them in different camps which technically we shouldn't do and where does that come from no I mean yeah right that's a big question that we don't have answers for I guess for me I like the idea of masturbation tools accessories to look

as simple as possible i'm talking just a beautiful smooth vibrated dildo i don't want it to be hanging from something and plugged in and wi-fi and plastic coming off it in all angles and shapes personal thing you you like a chic you like a little pink chic looking sleek thing sexy Porsche of a dildo that looks as far away from an actual penis as possible but when i look at this contraption so even it looks more like keisha's frank green water bottle than it does actually a penis. It's pastel purple. I'm looking at this now, you guys, we'll put a picture up on our Instagram. There is nothing about this that I would want to be using in a sexy, intimate relationship with my partner. It literally has blue plastic everywhere, screws, clamps,

cork downs. It's got a voice machine there. It doesn't do it for me. I'd be interested to see how many people look at this and would be turned on. Well, I mean, I don't think it's for our demographic of females. I feel like this is very much, I mean, even the coloring of it is very much for men. However, I disagree with you in some ways, because I think the thing about guys, pleasure toys or whatever we want to call them, fleshlights and whatnot, is that they always seem to look very much like they are mimicking a body part. When I think of fleshlights, they're literally flesh colored. This, the top of it, yes, the rest of it is blue, but the top of it is the color of a mouth or a vagina or a butt. Very few vibrators these days are made to look like a

fetus. I remember like the old school ones that were all veiny. And I mean, I remember finding one under my mum's bed. That's a whole other story. They literally looked like an amputated penis lying under her bed. Whereas now you could find someone's vibrator and you'd be like, oh, cute, inoffensive, fine. You might not even know what it is. Yeah. I literally found a bag of dicks under my mum's bed as a kid. A bag of dicks. Do you think, I haven't heard this. The only thing I will say is I haven't heard what sound this makes. So I don't know if it's like, because it's mechanical i don't know if it's like or if it's like a blow drum is like anyway i think like the big take home from this conversation we're all very confused by it but there's no point

not everything has to have a point no i think there is a point i think the point is almost reframing why do we see sex toys in such different ways i don't think that we're being biased like i'm thinking it's not just us who thinks this i also think it's very societal we are just having a real moment at the moment where everywhere you look women and their sex toys and women and masturbation and women and sexual pleasure it's out and having a moment it's having a moment and it's out and it's loud and it's proud and it's amazing but we don't see it as much for the men so then when we do it's a bit taboo still well do you know why as well it's because male sexual pleasure has always been out loud and proud it has always been public display i mean there's

always been the conversation about men are sexually driven that it's like very common for men to masturbate. Male sexual desire has been well documented and spoken about throughout all of time. And the reason why it's almost like the pendulum has had to swing so far in the opposite direction is because for women for so long, it was taboo and women are reclaiming that now. But it's almost like for men that it's become shameful for them to be out and proud and sexual about it. I would love anyone listening, if you have used one of these in your relationship, or if you're a guy listening and you've used one, I'd love you to write in and tell us It's just purely a curiosity to see how similar it is

to getting a blowjob. That's what I want to know. That's my take home. Like contact us and tell us. Talk us through your Fleshlight experience. Yeah, like an out of ten. I want you to read. Call now.

It's called the AutoBlow A1 Plus, an automatic jerk-off machine, roughly the size and shape of a small box with round edges. Please, if you have used one, let us know. Just curiosity. Connects to Wi-Fi. You can download different experiences. Not sponsored. And you can control the blowjob using voice command.

But anyway, if a Fleshlight would like to sponsor this podcast, come on board next week. Joining us on the podcast today is Kelly Finlayson. Now Kelly is married to Port Adelaide AFL player, Jeremy Finlayson. They just recently got married. So big congratulations. Together they have a baby girl named Sophia. In August, 2021, after just giving birth to her daughter and at only 25 years old, Kelly was diagnosed with bowel cancer. She was otherwise happy and healthy. Kelly has been sharing her battle with cancer on social media in an effort to raise awareness around the disease especially in young people. Now at just 27 she has received the news that the bowel cancer has spread. The disease has now metastasized to

her lungs where it has been diagnosed as stage four and terminal. I saw Kelly's story like many have on Instagram and knew we wanted to help her on her mission to raise awareness for this horrible disease. Kelly welcome to Life Uncut. Thanks for having me. No thank you for making the time. We of course want your most embarrassing moment we want to throw you under a bus what is your accidentally unfiltered okay so i actually had to ask my partner if i was allowed to share this because it is quite embarrassing that's always a good start when you're like let me check yeah i did have to check so when we were very very fresh it was actually around easter time when we're very fresh in the relationship and i obviously have had really bad bowels for

quite some time and i had left a little bit of a poo stain on a quick cover and convinced him that it was chocolate to the point because it was easter time to the point that he like wiped it and smelled it no at least you have a baby you could have blamed it on though you didn't have to take fault for that no the baby didn't exist no we didn't have babies at this turn this was like three weeks in yeah this is very fresh that is actually kelly i'm gonna say it that has to be one of the most embarrassing ones i've ever had mortifying at least he didn't put it to his mouth at least it was just to his nose he smelled it and then did he call was he like babe i know that's poo it was like no you need to go to the toilet then give shat yourself mortifying i'm actually

there's not often that i'm it's not often that i put myself in the position and i'm like i'm mortified for this person, but I actually am. And at the time he was in an apartment building that they had a shared laundry on each level because he was living in Sydney. So obviously really small apartments. And I literally took the sheets off straight away, the quick cover straight away, put it into the wash and just pretended nothing happened. I know that we've just started. We've gotten right in there. We started with the poo chat, but I feel like we're going to get pretty comfortable in this episode talking about things. And I'm guessing that you are now at a point in your life where speaking about poo must be something that you are

very comfortable with. Can you tell us, we're going to get into talking about your diagnosis and everything that has been happening to you over the last year and a half, but what was your life like beforehand, before you found out that something had gone wrong? So prior to diagnosis, we had just had Sophia. So she was three months old. We'd just moved home to Adelaide from Sydney with Jez's job. Luckily enough, able to get a trade, to be closer to family for help with Soph. things were actually just going really really well obviously having a new baby is exciting as it is but then also being closer to home closer to all my friends because I grew up in SA and then went to school in Adelaide so I was like finally like gonna start living my life living

the the milf life on the beach yeah but no it didn't turn out that way obviously so I was a school teacher but obviously during COVID didn't teach much all online so it was yeah were you primary school or high school no I'm a high school math teacher are you I would never have guessed that no no one really does I don't come across as the most intelligent human but no no it's not that I just feel like when I think of high school math teachers I don't think they're young milfs I don't think of them as young I think of them as like the old professor with the glasses yeah old men I know and funnily enough all of university obviously because doing math courses were all like engineering courses they were all like middle-aged men imagine the school kids imagine

like the 17 year old kids when Kelly walks I know they're like all of a sudden I love math very distracting yeah you can imagine the comments it's yeah Kelly I mean going back to your accidentally unfiltered story I mean I I know we can't we can't move on from it because we've got to head back there but I mean your story and there was a diagnosis that came after Sophia was born but you just mentioned that you were having issues with your bowels kind of a long time before that can you give us a little bit of context around like what you were experiencing and at what point did you realize okay something is absolutely not right here so I had about two to three years of symptoms in terms of like just differences in my bowel movements and stuff like

that and like they're bloating just anything that you kind of relate to period so like all of the symptoms around your period I was getting but like more than just the week of my period which I thought was just me being a girl and then obviously when I was pregnant all the pregnancy symptoms symptoms were very similar as well. So it wasn't until I actually had blood in my poo that I thought something was wrong. I thought I was just like everyone else that had the lactose intolerance or something like that. I mean, it's funny that you say that when you say, I just thought I was being a girl because you're just like, oh, it's just my crazy hormones this week. Yeah. We always pass it off as something. But when you went to the doctor with these initial

symptoms, what did they tell you it was or what advice did they give you in the early stages when you were like, oh, I don't feel right. Yeah. So initially I went and got seen by naturopaths and whatnot and like did all of the herbal teas and all of the stuff like that and then I started 2020 I actually did a poo sample which must have shown up some sort of discrepancy because they booked me for colonoscopy which then got cancelled because of COVID because it was an elective surgery or procedure but yeah so initially it was literally just avoid these foods and test if it's an allergy to this food or maybe you're not exercising enough even though I was running marathon so like wasn't an issue not drinking enough water and just like the general chit chat

of that stuff yeah were you in any pain at the time or was it just this kind of you know symptomatic kind of discomfort yeah discomfort absolutely no pain I've never had pain even after diagnosis during all my treatment never pain how is it that you did your poo sample and they found something wasn't quite right enough to say you need to go for a colonoscopy but then they can cancel the colonoscopy because they're saying it's elective and you're choosing to what do you have to do for it to not be elective what do you have to do to say like if you had markers in your poo to say you required further examination how can they possibly cancel that because there must be a part of you now that's like what if I went earlier like what if you didn't cancel that appointment

and I got my testing when I needed it yeah well that's right so like if I that's what kind of what I'm advocating for at the moment is like the early detection because if I had have gone I could have literally just got the polyp or whatever was there removed and I would have never even had to have treatment or like a resection nothing like that which is kind of frustrating but it's because I didn't actually have blood in my stool at the time it was just I guess an abnormal amount of some sort of nutrients or whatever that they wanted to check if I had Crohn's or something similar to that like an irritable bowel rather than just the sensitive bowel so yeah they were kind of checking me more so for that because of my age obviously which is kind of frustrating

because it's literally the leading cancer killer for 25 to 34 year olds so it's like I didn't know that then I had no idea about back cancer then but now obviously I know more about it. I mean you're three months postpartum and I would also assume that during that phase there's already so many changes that are happening to your body that it's probably possible for you to kind of think that maybe this is part of the postpartum phase as well so when you went for your colonoscopy and you're and I'm guessing an endoscopy and they did all of the screenings what was that period like and kind of how did you then find out how progressed things were in terms of cancer? I definitely did just pass off everything as postpartum because it was my first child.

I had nothing to compare it to. We can hear her right now. We can hear her and be like, mom, get out. Daddy, daddy. Yeah, so I just passed everything off as postpartum because I had nothing to compare it to. I had no friends that had had babies either. So it was kind of hard to even talk to them about whether it was right or not. All I had was Dr. Google, which is never a good idea.

so then when I finally saw so Jeremy actually made a joke about me having to go to the toilet way too often that we would need to drive around with a waterloo because we were always stopping off at like every petrol station to go to the toilet even though I couldn't actually go it was just a tumor in my colon that I felt like I need to pass but I couldn't pass obviously because it's a tumor but yeah so then we went to a doctor and she was like straight away when I said there was blood she was like that's not good at all like obviously yes you can have blood on your toilet of paper from like wiping too hard or whatever. But in the actual poo itself is like a big scary no-no. I saw a specialist two days later, had a colonoscopy within a week and the next day I was

seeing a surgeon. So it was like very, very fast paced. So what was the timeframe just to get our head around it? What was the timeframe when you were supposed to get your colonoscopy originally in COVID to when you were actually diagnosed? So March, 2020, and then I got diagnosed November 2021 so 18 months yeah wow that must be so frustrating for you so frustrating because it was like so progressed when you got to a point where you and I mean this is quite a graphic question but when you got to the point where you were like okay there is blood now was it consistent like every time you went to the toilet you were like all right there's always blood yeah and I need to go and sort this out was that when the real alarm bells started ringing for you yeah so

probably like three days straight of the blood prior to that i thought i was just bleeding from having a baby naturally like vaginally because sorry every birth is natural but yeah i thought that there was just blood from that because it was what eight weeks or so that that can happen yeah of course yeah and then it was like maybe three or four days that it just happened in a row a month later that i was like it can't be my period already because i'm breastfeeding like surely not so then i was like it's definitely in my poo and then i'd like actually looked in the toilet bowl and for like three days straight it was in there so yeah I imagine that that moment that you get called in the day after to have the discussion about what's next I imagine

that's a day now that will you know it literally changed the course of your life what was that day like and was it really just jumping into action was it like this is it we start tomorrow yeah so the day of the colonoscopy I actually found out that it was cancer just because the gastro entologist told me he was like this is what cancer looks like he basically showed me a photo of the insides of my bowel and I was like holy shit like cancer I'm 25 at the time and I was like that is not something that I would have thought it would be ever like I thought they were going to give me a nutrition plan of how to deal with Crohn's or something like that and then he was like way too much to process tonight sort of thing but I've booked you in for 4 30 tomorrow

he's a great surgeon like at Flinders like it was just it was also go go go so I literally just went home had two friends meet me home straight away and like I couldn't even talk to them about it I was like it's not real like I was in denial complete denial I think we all were to be honest and then the next day I saw the surgeon and he was like we're gonna send you for a b and c tests all the tests make sure like we know where it's progressed so we know which course of action to take like if it's only stage one they've removed cancerous cells and basically 99% chance of complete survival like nothing further stage two would be maybe a bit of treatment stage three is like heavy treatment and the stage four was obviously terminal so originally we thought

stage three because it was in the lymph nodes and then when we had a PET scan it was tracking at my back so like straight away it was stage four so it had already moved from the original spot up further towards my spine so it was like basically straight away wham bam like got to get on to this so did they tell you that and on that day are they just really don't beat around the bush are they like this it is what it is they can't beat around the bush like they can't sugarcoat it because it's, that wouldn't be fair on me, but also like their job is literally to tell me this is what we have to do in order to prolong your life. How do you process that? Especially knowing you've just had a little baby, your life is heading in this incredible direction. And then

you just get this like unbelievable news. Like how do you even process what's going on around you? It was denial for a very, very long time. And also like, so while you're going through like the treatment side of things, it's kind of just, everything's in the doctor's hands. There's nothing really I can do other than trust that they know what they're doing. So I didn't process things until the treatment had finished and I was essentially no evidence of disease in July. So from November to July, I didn't process anything. It was like the come down after that, that I started being like, hell, this is my life forever sort of thing. And what does that mean? So if you say that you've received a terminal cancer diagnosis as in stage four, that then you are

and get to a point of being disease free. How do those two things coincide? How can you be disease free if you've been given this like almost morbid diagnosis? Yeah. So basically any stage four cancer diagnosis is considered terminal only because the chances of survival are so slim. But the course of action that we took with the treatment was so invasive and aggressive. It was crazy. Like I was literally on my deathbed after each cycle of treatment. Like it was nothing anyone should ever go through, but I knew why I was going through it, if that makes sense so then they removed all they could of the bowel and like took it away so there was technically no evidence of disease but they knew that there was the possibility of microscopic cells floating

around that doesn't show up on any scans until they're a certain size and obviously in my case that happened like I know people that had the same diagnosis the exact same time as me and they still have nothing showing up so they are in remission but I wouldn't be able to get the remission card until like five years down the track do they when they say you have stage four do they give you a time frame you know you watch the movies and you're like you have three months to live you have one year to live could they do that for you no no so they wouldn't and they're not going to do that until they literally can't control it so because the chemo works so well for me and my cancer responds so well they were never going to give me a timeline obviously they tell me like

the statistics of the five year like seven percent chance of making it five years and whatever but they didn't say like oh you've got three months to live go home and get comfortable they were like obviously we'll do everything we possibly can like you're young you're fit you can fight this but it's going to be a long road when I think of bowel cancer my very first thought is that it's an old people's problem I would never in a million years think that someone's so young that it could even be a possibility do you feel like it's maybe an illness that's been underrepresented in young people that it's something we should be more aware of or do think you are just such an anomaly in this instance no so I think it's just not talked

about I think it's an embarrassing cancer to have it's not breast cancer it's not like melanoma from being in the sun too much sort of thing like it's not a sexy cancer like it's not something that I guess you would want to have a chat about even like if you're a 20 year old girl you're not going to tell someone that you've got blood in your poo like it's just not something that's talked about but it's so common like the amount of people that I've met since being diagnosed that have also been diagnosed or had polyps removed because of the symptoms that I've had is actually outrageous like I'm like this is crazy I'd never heard of any of this until I was diagnosed but now there's so many people like even just with my surgeon like they literally call it the Kelly cancer

my surgeon because he's had so many people come since that have had the exact same thing it's just crazy which is actually so amazing in the sense that whether you know it or not now you are making such a difference like the number of people that you have already brought awareness to like when i i told a few people that i was getting you on because i thought it was really important and they're like oh my god i've read about kelly i've booked an appointment because of that like you really are and like you just said people aren't talking about it because it's the shit cancer literally it's shit it's the poo it's the things that the bodily functions that people are like ew and i know why you said it's not a sexy cancer i don't think any cancer is

sexy but I understand what you mean but you really are you're doing incredible things but let's talk about your treatment did you do it all because I know you can have surgery radiation chemo what were your treatment options yep so initially they gave me they asked me if I wanted to do my IVF but then it was just basically after my scans it was like look if you prolong these two weeks to do the IVF it's going to be too far gone sort of thing like you've got a kid let's just be happy with her and then we'll move on and that's because the chemo can basically kill your chances of fertility and conceiving him yeah that's right so like i've gone into early menopause whether i can come back from that i don't know what was that period like before we kind of just scoot over that

yeah you know being so young and being a new mom and thinking maybe you might want to have more kids in the future but not having the opportunity to be able to freeze your eggs or go through the IVF treatment. How have you processed that? Have you been able to kind of make peace with it? Is it something that you're still struggling with? Yeah. So that was honestly my biggest struggle was knowing that I may not give Sophia any siblings, which is so hard. Like we'd always plan to have a big family. Like it's just something that I've always wanted, which was so hard to like the hardest pill to swallow out of all the pills that I've swallowed the last 18 months but we've kind of come to terms with it knowing how many options we do have like

adoption is no longer an option because I have a big red flag of terminal written next to my name so like no one's gonna give me a child knowing I've got a terminal diagnosis regardless of whether I hit remission or not and even then if that's 10 years time that's a very big age gap and I'll be having children very late so we do have like the option of like egg donors or surrogacy like I know that there's options out there it's just trying to find when I'm well enough to even have the newborn or if that's something that we even want to do now knowing like how hard it's been having one child with this illness like if I do relapse in five years time having two might would just be even harder so yeah that's the question then isn't it so do you think

you would look at going down that track like what's your criteria would you want to wait until you had a 100% intermission in the clear or do you think you would want to do it anyway to continue you to grow your family for your husband Jeremy so I'll never be 100% nuclear like ever every three months of my checkup will be like if I do eventually get no evidence of disease this time around like it will be a scare or a wait every single time just like waiting for the all clear but I don't think I'll ever be 100% in remission but it will probably I've got to be at least 12 months post my second diagnosis to even start working again let alone to start thinking about having a family like whether my uterus can carry again whether I have to do surrogacy like it's a

long process but we probably won't start talking about it to the end of the year. Have you felt like you've been able to be the type of mum that you wanted to be you know I think we all had these ideas of what motherhood's going to be like and it's almost like so much of your time of motherhood's being robbed by being sick or having treatment has that impacted your I mean I don't want to say your ability to enjoy being a mum but I feel like feeling like you've been able to like connect and have those precious moments with Sophia or even just be at home and not in hospital yeah so I was 100% robbed of my first year of motherhood like completely robbed of it my mum's actually moved in with us last year and then she's just recently again moved back in to be full-time carer of

Sophia and me as it is but no it wasn't obviously what I thought it was going to be I have this time around, been able to connect a lot more and have given a lot more energy to her, which is really nice, especially now that she's so busy. But when she was a newborn, she probably didn't even know who her mum was, if I'm being honest. She would have had about five or six women in her life that were around just as much as I was. So she knows who mum is now, but at the time it was just another figure in her life. It really does take a village. I'm so sorry. I can't comprehend with going through that sort of diagnosis, but I think going through it at the time in your life where you were going through it when it's such a pivotal

I mean it's such a pivotal time for your identity yeah you being able to embrace motherhood but also knowing that you had to focus on your health and focus on yourself and and I don't mean be selfish but I mean you could only think of yourself in that period of time in order to be able to heal and I can't even begin to imagine how that added layer of how difficult that would have been for you yeah quite literally the mental side of it was the hardest part of the entire recovery periods like 12 nights away was the most that I did in hospital not seeing Sophia because of COVID times she was under 16 so she wasn't vaccinated so I couldn't actually come into the hospital yeah so 12 nights away from her was the hardest time like it hit me the hardest and then that was the time

that I got told that I wasn't in remission and wouldn't be in remission until five years had been up so then I was also emotional from that but yeah it was it was hard it was definitely hard but we got through it so much like so well because of the community we had around us like we're very lucky with who we had around us and so let's go over to your treatment options what options did they give you and what did you decide to do and why so I didn't really get any options as such it was more so here's your regime this is all that's going to work like we need to fight this as aggressively as we possibly can so we went straight in with five weeks of every day having radiotherapy. So 25 days of radiotherapy, got the weekends off over Christmas, which was

intense, but then also taking chemotherapy tablets. So I took eight chemo tablets a day on those days as well. So that was my first, I guess, bout of treatment. Once that was up, then I had six intense rounds of the IV chemotherapy, which was, they literally put me on my deathbed every single time. Like I was getting toxic shock to the treatment every single time I was being admitted. What were those symptoms for people listening now that don't know? I was literally on my deathbed. I was literally hooked up in hospital with the drips and stuff because I was so chronically dehydrated. I was getting toxic shock. So I was allergic to one of the compound drugs in the chemotherapy. We didn't know that until afterwards. I thought

that I was just being completely attacked by this chemo, but it was working so well. My markers were coming down so well that I just kept going back every time. But yeah, now that I know that I was allergic to it, I'm like, damn it. Kind of wish I looked into that more. When you say you're allergic to it, do you mean one of the carriers of what carries the chemotherapy through your body? Like I think one of them is castor oil or something. Yeah. So I had to stop on my fifth treatment. I was meant to do the stick. I had to stop halfway through my fifth as well, but I was allergic to the oxyplatin, which is literally just one of the compounds in the drip itself that was going in so this time around they've taken that out and I'm like living like normal

it's so good so then I had a bowel resection so they removed my rectum and some of my sigmoid colon so about 20 centimeters of my bowel and then just reconnected it and I had a colostomy for nine months and an ileostomy for three months so I literally shat out of my stomach it's like my colon has been stitched to my stomach and I literally poo out of my stomach so like most people think there's like even my dad thought there was like a hose into my bowel that would make it come out but no I'm literally stitched my bowel to my stomach and it's an opening on my stomach how do you deal with the psychological impacts of that um I hated that for a bit in terms of the bag on my stomach it was uncomfortable especially for someone that like I genuinely like

what I look like in the mirror when I wake up in the mornings but so having that there like I didn't have sex with my husband for six months probably because I was so disgusted in myself. He didn't give a shit, but I was so disgusted in myself. And then it probably took about six months for me to get used to it. And then it was kind of like a countdown until I was going to get rid of it. And then obviously once I got rid of it, I was like, had this big opening gash on my stomach. So now it's just like this big scar, which I hate, but at least it's not an ileostomy, but yeah. What was that? I mean, you just mentioned that your husband, Jeremy was like, I couldn't care less. What was this going back to the diagnosis? How did he take that? How

did he sort of jump into action and handle the situation? I think he was scared not so much that I was sick but scared that he would have to be a mum and a dad like he had done a couple of days of just him and Soph and it was obviously so hard he doesn't have nipples he can't feed his child naturally so like he was scared that he was gonna have to do the mum and dad side of things which I could imagine would be freaking scary being a single parent without choosing to be a single parent and also once I had started the treatment watching me go through it and seeing me completely obliterated like I was so sick we'll just scare the shit out of him like he's not used he's used to seeing me as the fun bubbly mum that has fun and like even just person before I was a mum like

I was the live wire I was the socialite I was the extrovert and he was the shy little guy in the corner that would only be brought out of his shell if I was with him sort of thing so watching me then be the little one in the shell was just hard for him Kelly you are I mean even speaking to you now like you're so vibrant you are so positive you seem so incredibly resilient and I would say if I didn't know any better I'd say but you look so well and I can only imagine that that must be an incredibly frustrating thing to deal with when you are and have been so sick dealing with people be like but are you sure you're that sick you look so well I literally had someone come up to me and David Jones after my most recent diagnosis and I was shopping for shoes for Sophia I remember

it so clearly because I was so shocked I had some random lady walk up past me about two two meters away from me like you look awfully well for someone that's terminally ill I was like huh like almost like a challenge like are you putting it on like was that the implication do you think like are you trying to be an arsehole or are you giving me a compliment saying I'm doing well looking well I know I was like I was like what just came out of your mouth I like walked the other way and had to like process it myself I was like this is crazy that someone thinks that their opinion like that should be heard let alone in person like I was like what like there's trolls and then there's that oh and I have seen some of the trolls on your Instagram that you've spoken

about and it's I was speaking to Keisha and Laura about it nothing makes my blood boil more I was like can you fucking believe these people but you just mentioned your second diagnosis so let's talk about that so you've gone through your first round of chemo for your bowel cancer what had happened then did you get good results saying you were in remission no so no remission but good results in terms of like nothing was showing up on scans like if there was anything there was microscopic doing really really well like come back in three months type thing will rescan you so I was actually due for a rescan in January but then had symptoms in December thinking I had COVID I don't know if you've had COVID but I literally just couldn't breathe and like walking

upstairs i was like so puffed i was like this is not good so being immunocompromised i get like this special little nutrient drip if i do get covered just to like bounce me back up and so i went into the hospital and i was like guys give me the drip i need the drip i'm screwed here and they luckily enough the nurse at the time was like oh i follow your journey like we'll take things really seriously like any abnormalities to my health kind of they just want to take really seriously and i was like yeah no worries we'll do a ct scan like easy and then they thought that maybe I had pneumonia because I had a massive like soft bull size like bigger than a tennis ball size mass in my chest cavity and that well first of all obviously they thought it was cancer

because that's the first thing they're going to think of it's for a cancer patient and they were like look it's not looking good like they showed me what it was and they were like but the thing is pneumonia does mimic cancer in a CT scan so I was like oh it's just pneumonia like it's fine just pneumonia which is crazy to think that I would just want that but yeah obviously in the grand scheme of things that would be much better and then they sent it off to like all of my specialists in Adelaide and they were like not not convinced so we only scanned you two months ago like can't be like that's huge like it can't be what we think it is and there was never any nodes in my lungs or anything so they were like like where it is it just doesn't make sense I was like

sick come back in like I stayed home for Christmas just had some antibiotics felt really good so obviously thought that's what it was came back here and they did a scope into my lungs so bronchoscopy rather than the like endoscopy into my bowel so it just went into my lungs and they found what they thought was a mucus plug turns out that it was a like a little tiny baby tumor in one of my airways so when I woke up they were like you told me to be honest because I was like don't bullshit me when I wake up sort of thing like I know you don't know who I am because like I've never met this man before he was just doing it for as a favor for my surgeon that does my other surgeries and I was like I know you don't know who I am but don't bullshit me when I wake up tell me exactly

what's going on and he's like yeah no worries I'll tell you as much as I can when I wake up he's like look I looked under a scope myself because I knew that you'd want to know what's going on and he's like it's suspicious activity probably cancer like you're a cancer patient sort of thing and I was like fuck not good not exactly what I obviously wanted to hear it's broke down in tears I was there by myself obviously and they were like look we'll send you to the x y and z this week and make sure that we've got it right because we don't want to get it wrong he said I would resect it and he wanted to resect it there and then but just in case it had shown up anywhere else if he resected that would put me back six weeks for treatment so he's like no we need to do the scans do it

properly and then when I went for scans it was just literally everywhere so they were like ah so chemo is your only option otherwise literally sending me home to just get comfortable basically so what was the diagnosis stage four lung cancer no so it's all it's bowel cancer because that's where it's come from so it's just bowel cancer that's spread so it's just secondary cancer that has spread to my lung so it's still stage four bowel cancer because that's where the initial but metastasizes to the lung yeah that's right yeah so yeah it was either go home and get comfortable or we are going to go through chemo again so obviously I'm going through chemo again so where are you in terms of your chemo now so which treatment are you up to for this round of

processing and how are things looking so I am actually halfway now of my 18 week course of chemo and so I'm halfway now so I go back in tomorrow morning for my fourth round and then I've got five and six but my markers had were obviously higher when I got re-diagnosed and they're back into the normal range so that's great chemo is working really well yeah it's working really well it's not where we need them to be but they are normal so like if I was to go for a three-month checkup and that's where my markers were they wouldn't even look further into it but because obviously they know what's going on inside they're gonna finish off my three more rounds and I've also got an alternative treatment next week in the Gold Coast to try and

progress that faster. Throughout this whole process and when you get the news that this cancer has metastasized to your lungs like where is your mental health at like how do you stay positive throughout all this yeah um so initially it was kind of like to be honest it was a bit like woe is me I spent probably two or three weeks after I found out just hating everyone and anyone like anyone would people be like it's right you got through it once we can do it again I'm like you don't understand how hard it was the first time like I said after my first round of treatment and I'm never doing it again if it comes back I'm never doing it again like I'm done but then I changed oncologists and he was rather than he's still straightforward but he's rather than being

like we have to do this medical medical medical medical medical sort of approach he's like your quality of life is so important like this is going to be a really long-term thing now if we want to make it last like if we want to prolong your life we can't just think about the next three months we need to think about the next five years type thing so he changed my dosages changed it up took out some things changed my chemotherapy he's just taken a different approach and it made me more confident in going into chemo again because obviously like scared shitless to go sit in that chair again like i was terrified walking into that room i was like oh my god no i can't do it i want to run away but yeah his approach has really helped me really helped isn't that amazing

that just the difference in the way a doctor will speak to you can change you literally wanting to take the treatment that will save your life but I imagine there is a difference with if you're thinking you have to go to hell and back to live for three months I imagine you'd be like I just I'm not doing it like let's just do this now like that was so bad but when someone gives you the optimism and the positivity to say it is going to be a long run but we can do this and it's not just you you're doing it for now you've got your daughter Soph and you've got your husband Jeremy and I guess there's a different outlook on life yeah well that's right so I obviously was expecting to be unbelievably ill again but after even five minutes of sitting in

the chair I was like I feel so much better already knowing like it was a different like regime so if I didn't have Sophia I don't know if I would have gone again but because I obviously need to prioritize her and her having a mum to grow up with because I couldn't imagine growing up without my mum so yeah I've just prioritised her in everything and it's working. Kelly when you're dealing with so much in your life an overwhelming amount of you know you've had one cancer diagnosis and then another one how are you able to find the positivity and find things to be grateful for when there is so many things that you're dealing with in one time? Yeah so gratitude is something that I try so hard to find my three things each day.

Like I used to do a journal long, long, like well before I had any diagnosis and I always used to find three things I was grateful for, but they're all quite, I guess, trivial surface level stuff. Like for example, good health, roof over your head, family, whatnot.

But yeah, when you are in hospital and you don't have good health, you don't have your own roof over your head and you don't have your family around for a long period of time, especially during those COVID times, I found it a lot harder to find those three things that I was grateful for.

And like listening to a podcast the other day, of another cancer survivor he's gone through two different completely separate types of cancer and it just reminded me how hard it was to find those three things where like you have to dive a little bit deeper and obviously there is still things to be grateful for like I'm not dead I'm alive treatments working and stuff like that but like I found myself finding like I guess still quite humorous and like gentle trivial things like oh the nurse let me sleep overnight because I asked So not to do my obs at midnight so that I got the extra couple of hours sleep. And like, I was grateful for her, even though she was probably not meant to do that.

But like, I would beg for it. Like, I need the sleep tonight. So that was something I'd be grateful for one day or one day I would be, oh, I'm grateful that my nurse came in and refreshed my waters and my flowers and like did my curtains, even though I felt like I didn't want to get up and about. Like she forced me, but in a way that I knew that I needed and things like that. Or like, even just when I'm home, I still do have my daughter. Like I'm grateful for her.

I'm grateful for my partner. I am grateful for my family but like yeah those times that you don't have them around it's so much harder to see them as something that you're grateful for because they're just not there in your everyday life so I guess still being able to find something positive out of such a negative experience really does help your mental health go a long way like a really long way which is I think so important I think something that everyone should do is even if it's not written down in a journal it's just when they wake up in the morning be like look I'm grateful that I get to get up and go to the gym this morning. Like, yeah, it's a slog. It's five o'clock in the

morning, but I get to do that. Like some people don't get to do that. And that's what people don't realize. Like your health is literally your wealth. Like if you are able to do something, you must do it. It's funny you say that you've just reminded me of something. It's the idea of changing your mindset. When you say, oh, I have to go to work today. You say, I get to go to work today. And it's those little changes in your day to say, well, I still am here. I am still healthy enough to get up and have the opportunity to go to work instead of I have to do this I have to go to the gym no you don't have to but you've got a healthy body that gets to so I guess it's yeah that's really reinforcing that sort of messaging so reframing it yeah yeah 100% the

fact that you're able to do that is so huge like there's so many people out there that aren't able to and it's not until you can't that you realize how badly you wish you could when you have a terminal cancer diagnosis how has that sort of reframed the way you look at life in terms of living in the now versus looking to the future? Yeah. Well, obviously because I'm going through treatment at the moment, like everything's kind of focused into getting myself through this slug of treatment. Like I'm not looking for what's going to be happening next year. And like it is very much in 12 week blocks at the moment, which is fine because that's all I can really get my head around anyway. But just like the small things in life, like even when my coffee was too hot,

then normally I'd be one to complain about that. But like, honestly, if that's the worst thing that's happened to me today, then is my life that bad? I'm going through a very, very, very intense treatment for the worst disease you could ever possibly get. But I would still complain about my hot coffee and then be like, Kelly, wake up to yourself. There's so many worse things in the world right now. It's a hot coffee. I remember we had the girl that fell from the sky, M. Kerry, on the podcast. She's amazing. But something that stuck with me is just she said when she was plummeting to a death and she thought this is it. Within seconds everything flashed before her eyes the things that she realized she hadn't done yet or the things that she had been complaining about

she didn't know why and then the repercussions of that were every day now every day she gets up for the sunrise. She feels like she looks at life in a different way and I can only imagine that's something that you feel too when you know that it could be taken away from you. And I guess it is such a similar experience but with just such different circumstances like she was falling to her death I've listened to her podcast as well and read her book and stuff she's literally falling for a death so she could see the end whereas I guess yeah I do have a terminal illness and like there is technically an end point but I haven't been given that end point and I can't see it like it's not in two weeks time it's not in two years time like I don't know when it is I know

it's coming but I don't know when it is and I feel like that's probably a little bit scarier but I actually use the if you can you must from what she says and I think it's so important do you think you would rather know the end point you know when you say it's so up in the air like I don't know when it is do you think you would rather know or because you just mentioned it's quite scary not knowing so do you think what would be easier do you think for you so the unknown probably plays on my mind a lot more than anything else which is it's just a given like that it's probably the case with anyone but I think because I know how well my cancer responds to treatment if they gave me an end point it would probably be wrong so I'm like I'm glad I don't have an end point obviously

I want to live a really really long life but if it was to be within two years I'd want to know that too so I guess it's just getting through each block and then reassessing so like in four or five weeks time I'll recess and we'll see how far I've come and if my cancer's responded to this chemo I could be no evidence of disease and live for 80 years like it's just a term of like keeping up the maintenance and stuff but yeah I know what you're saying like rather knowing than not but i don't i don't want to be given a three-month diagnosis or sorry an end date and then not happen if that makes sense because that'd almost be worse yeah because then i'd be like i'd get to that point i'd be like huh and i guess also having that hope to work towards i mean like hope is

something that i think is such a powerful emotion like it keeps us being positive it keeps us moving forward and i guess in terms of your situation like to take that away from someone feels incredibly cruel yeah like well I trust my doctor so much and like they are so confident that whatever's going on with me like we'll get through it like even my markers I've just got my markers back again from the so my midway mark and they're still stable and low which is incredible oh congrats thank you which doesn't happen with many people but yeah so they're confident that in this five weeks time when I do get my reassessment I'd be able to just move on to the next treatment plan which is the resection and then once you're a sec there's nothing left until obviously the

three monthly checkup. So then I am still going three monthly, but I could have 10 more three monthlies. I could have 50 more three monthlies. I don't know. Like it is very unknown, but I'd rather be unknown than be given a date that's not real. Was there bowel cancer that ran in your family? Were there anything in your life that was a predetermining factor for why you were high risk for this? Or is it just something that was incredibly unfortunate? So my, both my parents were actually adopted so we don't have a family history funnily enough but my care my tumor's been pulled apart by every single type of medical scientist and there's no genetic factors so literally just like unlucky but yeah there's no muta like no genetic factors at all so we're not

sure no one knows why well it's one of those things i do the ct scans kelly i'm diagnostic radiographer but what we always used to say is cancer doesn't discriminate it doesn't care who you are doesn't care how old you are it doesn't care how much money you have how privileged you are it doesn't care about anything in life it just comes at any time but talking about privilege this is I mean I saw this on your Instagram the other day this is we're going to be talking about trolls now and I feel sick saying this but like let's fucking tear them apart you were talking the other day on your social media about what somebody wrote to you and you've been getting some really interesting feedback like the lady in the shopping center yeah and somebody literally

wrote to you and said that you're privileged sick or a nepo sick if you will yeah quote nepo sick if you will i love that you're laughing because you're a better person than me because i would want to reach through the screen so the thing that got to me normally with it if anyone ever wrote anything to me dm because i don't want to have that out there to other people to see it i just literally bleep block don't care never read into it i've got a really thick skin like i don't care much I'm a very confident person but they wrote it on a photo of my daughter at my wedding I was like screw you you want people to see this I'll make sure they do so I talked on it on my stories because the fact that anyone could think that I am in a privileged situation right now

just absolutely grinds my gears I'm literally fighting for my life and putting myself on social media to save other people's lives. Like I don't have a platform because I was on Love Island or Big Brother or any other TV series like that. Like that's not why I have a platform. I have a platform because I'm advocating for such an important thing. Like it's just beyond me that someone thought they needed to have that opinion heard. What does privilege sick even mean though? What were they even trying to imply by this? So they called me a wag for one, which was fun. I'm like, okay so now I'm just a person because my partner is a footballer which like it frustrates me even more because I literally have no following because of him like no one's following me because he's a

footballer people are following me because of the journey that I'm on like he's been a footballer for 10 years and I've only just since being sick got the platform that I do like it's not because of him which kills me but they think that because he's a footballer and earns a large wage that I am then therefore privileged even though for the last two years i haven't been out of work my mom hasn't been out of work and we go to the government trying to get like my disability like even just the health care card nah your partner earns too much like it just kills me like they literally the government said to my mom your son-in-law should be paying your wage if you are working for them so because your mom has given up her life in order to take care of you the expectation

is is that you would pay her for her caring role as opposed to it being a caring role that the government would help support which anyone else would get so like they would get the funding for that but because my partner's wage I don't but then the people from the outside all they see is that my partner's a footballer and we should be able to afford to get through all this whereas like realistically we're probably getting a lot less than if he was working and earning your average wage and I was getting paid by the government for what I'm going through it's just crazy well it also means that he has to it's a lot of pressure on just your partner too to then be like I can't even if I wanted to now I can't go on home and just be with my family I can't be

with my wife and my daughter because I have to literally be the only person that can support and into my family totally it's all it would be a lot of pressure on him as well it is a lot of pressure and like any footballer like they've got so much going on I know they do live a very good life and they have a very good job and they're paid accordingly but there's so many stresses on that poor man's life and I'm just another stress added to it really which I imagine he does not care about absolutely but like realistically I'm just another financial stress because I am literally just solely reliant on him and I no one ever wants to be reliant on someone especially not someone that would I feel like the people that would do it for you are the

people you don't want to have to do it for you totally how do you feel I mean apart from financially but how else do you feel that this cancer diagnosis has affected your relationship it has been hard like we don't talk about it at home at all so anytime I'm feeling off I just lock off and do my own thing which we've kind of come around to now like originally Jeremy was like why don't you want to talk to me like I'm supposed to be the person you talk to and I'm like but then it's real like it's real if we talk about it it's not real if I talk about it with the doctors or or whatever like as soon as it comes home with us that's when it feels so much more real so it's affected us kind of on a communication level there we're slowly getting through it now but that and

also just like obviously I'm sick I can't I can't do a lot so like there's absolutely no intimacy in our relationship which for any man is and woman if I'm being honest is a big hit to the relationship it's kind of like we went through a period of just being housemates raising a kid co-parenting sort of thing like that's that's just how it was like if I'm on chemo I can't even kiss him because then I'm transferring the chemo to him and that's obviously don't want to do that it's almost like you in a way are protecting him like I don't want to put you through I don't want to put it on you I don't want to unload it I don't want it to be in our house yeah and I was like I saw a psychologist quite a bit last year I have not at the moment but every time I went there they

were like you're not coming here to talk about me you're coming to talk about Jeremy and that's not what we're here for and I'm like but that's all I care about like all I care about is making sure they're okay I can't even imagine I'm really sorry that you're going through this it's um I was yeah I was um talking to my sister about it because she went and she was having some issues as well and she's very public on her Instagram and she went and had her bowels like she had the colonoscopy and everything and luckily everything came back fine but we were just talking about it the fact of how prevalent it is and I showed her your profile and I was just beside myself at what you're going through I just it's so unfair that that anyone has to go through this let alone

someone in at your age in your situation the fact that you just had a daughter but what I'm so bewildered by and like blown away by is you are so positive on social media and you are a breath of fresh air and you're really advocating and even a couple days ago I said how are you feeling do you want to do this yet or you know you tell me and you're like oh I'm feeling great you're like you came straight and be like and I was like how can this girl be feeling great but you just were Or even us, we're sitting here about to be in tears and you're like, it's fine. I know, you're like, stop crying. I'm like, don't you set me off.

You really do put things into perspective, I think. And I think a lot of people will be listening to this and will feel the same way. Why am I complaining about something so frivolous, like so stupid, so minor? And everyone does tell me that I'm like doing obviously all the things for the right reasons, which I'm so glad that people can see that's happening. but like I genuinely feel like I have a purpose in life to make sure no one else goes through what I've gone through like like I said at the start like a stage one diagnosis or even a polyp polyp can be removed in a colonoscopy gone no further following up all done stage one diagnosis 99%

chance of nothing coming back living forever like no chemo etc like the early detection is so important and I just don't want anyone else to have to go through what we've gone through how important is it to you for people to kind of understand the importance of advocating for your own health for taking responsibility for your own health that if you feel like something is not right if you've been dealing with symptoms or something not putting that off not waiting not thinking oh it'll be fine i'll get a checkup done later in the future how much is that part of your messaging now yeah it's probably the most pivotal part of everything really i also understand how scary it would be because I've obviously been there but scary now that they've seen someone

of their similar of a similar age or younger that has gone through it knowing that what can come from the checkup or come from the colonoscopy like I understand that it would be absolutely petrifying like I get it but the most important part is the early detection like if you're feeling some way and feeling like this needs to happen then there's a reason for that if there's even if you don't have the blood in the stool obviously that's the most important symptom and if you do have that then go get checked don't be stupid but even if there's other symptoms and there's a reason why you think you need to see a doctor it's probably something going on and you can literally save your own life just going to see a doctor like it's as simple as

that that's literally their job and how important do you think it is I mean I know that in the early days you were given the wrong diagnosis when you were told you know it's IBS or it's Crohn's or all these things. Was there a part of you that knew it wasn't and that wishes maybe you pushed harder or went to a different doctor for another opinion? No, I was so naive. Like I was part of the majority of the 20 year old girls that would be like, oh yeah, I'm intolerant to lactose and change to oat milk now. Like it's just things like that. I was so naive. I had no idea that you can even get bowel cancer at a young age. I didn't even know it was a thing. Like when they told me this is what bowel cancer looked like, I was like, you're kidding. No, it's not. Like I'm

25. I do not have bowel cancer. It just wasn't a thing. Kelly, in terms of where you're at now, what is next for you and what do you think lies ahead? Yep. So at the moment it's obviously getting through this treatment period. So I've got the three more rounds of it with the extra alternative treatment between as well. And then it's re-scanning and reassessing. So originally it was going to be re-scanning and seeing if the chemo had worked and then seeing if we needed to another six rounds and then adding in another antibody but because it's working so well we're hoping that it can just be rescan just like resect so take off that third lobe in my lung and just get rid of it and then move on with my life hopefully three monthly checkups or long-term

management like we just don't know until we get that scan like it's yeah kind of like 12 week blocks at the moment and what's the alternative treatment that you're trying if you don't mind me ask him? So it's hyperbaric therapy so it's oxygen therapy just starves the cancer of any sugars in the blood and it can't move forward which means the chemo can work better. And is this something that has any proof that it's ever working or are you sort of at a point where you're like throw something at me and I'll do it I'll try it? Honestly I've put my tumor markers forward to every single trial in Adelaide and then this one here came from another girl actually on social media but she went to Mexico and did treatment over there and I know that there is a really good

alternative cancer practice over there that's got really really good outcomes but it's also like 150 000 for a five weeks day and like nobody's got that type of money nobody's privileged enough to have that laying around yeah like that's going to be my entire life insurance basically spent on that which is just silly so i've just taken bits and pieces from what they've done and found it in australia it's still expensive it's still like five thousand dollars for the week which is in hindsight not that bad but like it's still expensive I'm just trying everything the thing is it's easy to say something's not that bad right like in the grand scheme of things it's five thousand dollars yeah but people still need to find five thousand dollars this week for something

and then next week's treatment is another five thousand dollars it's like yeah exactly it's very easy to put it in this little box and say it's not that much to save my life you still need to have it and I'm still paying for something that I didn't ask to have like it's not like I'm going out and buying a $5,000 holiday. Like I'm going out and buying $5,000 of oxygen therapy. Who wants that? Yeah. When I follow you on the Goop website, that's probably it. Yeah. Kelly, I just want to say thank you so much for giving us your time and for being so generous. And we can't imagine what it is that you're going through at the moment, but we are so grateful for the message and for the fact that even in a period of your life, that's been so challenging, that it's so important

for you to advocate for being responsible for your own health, for going and getting scanned or if there's something that's been niggling and it's been a worry for you going and getting checked. Because I do think that especially for people who are so young, it's so easy for us to fob it off as being something else. And you are like a true testament that we have to be responsible for our own health. We have to fight for that. And I just thank you so much for being a part of the pod and sharing your story.

Yeah, you're doing a very selfless thing. if there's one last thing you want to tell anyone listening anyone right now that thinks that there's something a bit unusual or something that's been bothering them what would you say honestly just trust your gut that's my go-to slogan at the moment it's just trusting your gut if you think something's wrong it likely is and if it's not then lucky you all right guys you know that we never finish an episode without our suck in our sweet our highlight and our low light of each every week except this week we are doing things a little bit differently and that is that we don't have a suck this week after listening to Kelly share her story and talk about

gratitude what we wanted to focus on this week are the things that we are very grateful for our highs and only the highs of the week Brit you can kick it off my sweet is I spent the weekend with Mitch Chury we went off to the Gold Coast and we just I've never I don't think I've ever laughed so much in my entire life I think it was 48 hours of non-stop laughter to the point that like in the We were in one laughing fit and he let out the biggest fart because he was laughing so hard he was pushing farts out. It was so funny. And you know when you accidentally fart and you're mortified

but you fart louder? Sweet. Every time he laughed he continued to fart. I love that you guys are at that point in the relationship now. It was so funny. Farting friends. I had a very laughing-filled weekend. You also were working on a very special project on the weekend,

which we will talk about because I know how much work and energy has been going into this. Yeah, we'll talk about a little project, but it's too much. We'll talk about it later. All right. Sweet for the week was obviously the weekend, obviously my birthday, but we did one thing which was like the true standout. We did this, it's called an eco tour, but basically we went

and took the kids mud crabbing and we took them fishing and then we had this amazing beautiful seafood lunch. All these experiences that weren't on the iPad. We did lots of things where the children did not have the iPad and it was amazing. It was really wholesome family time. That was great. That is so cute.

I have so much under boob sweat right now. It is so hot in here. Cute. I have so much sweat under my boot. And you know the drill, guys. Tell your mom, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friends, and share the love because we love love. We'll be right back.