00:00Remind me who's got early morning tomorrow.
00:07Ali Crawford is a busy mum to three teenagers.
00:13In 2022, the 51-year-old discovered she had a rare uterine cancer.
00:22Eight and a half weeks it took for diagnosis.
00:26My time stood still.
00:28I used everything that I knew to cope every day.
00:34And then I had to at three o'clock be normal mum.
00:41Her treatment is ongoing and has involved multiple surgeries and 11 cycles of chemotherapy.
00:48Ali doesn't know how long she has to live.
00:51She feels precious time was wasted just getting a diagnosis.
00:56Nothing was held up in getting scans.
00:58But I knew I had a ticking time bomb in my pelvis.
01:02It was a very confusing time.
01:06Hello.
01:07How are you?
01:08How are you?
01:09Ali Crawford.
01:10Lovely to see you.
01:11Thank you so much.
01:12Made up to the election, 150 terminally ill women and their supporters are visiting their
01:16local MPs, campaigning for more funding for gynaecological cancers.
01:21A commitment of 100 million.
01:23Yeah.
01:24Handing over a new report from the Australian New Zealand Gynaecological Oncology Group that's
01:29found women are unnecessarily dying because of a chronic lack of investment and their symptoms
01:35are not being taken seriously.
01:38When I read the stark realities of that report I was completely kind of a mixture of devastated
01:46but also now understood why we were in this position.
01:50The survival rates are as poor as the survival rates for all cancers 50 years ago.
01:59Professor Claire Scott is a scientist and medical oncologist.
02:02I believe that there hasn't been an improvement in survival because we simply don't know enough
02:07about these very rare cancers.
02:09We need more research and more clinical trials and that requires more support and more awareness.
02:16The report reveals 23 women will be diagnosed with a gynaecological cancer each day by 2035.
02:23These include ovarian, uterine, endometrial, cervical, vaginal and vulval cancers.
02:29For nearly two decades these have been the poorest funded cancers.
02:33The group is calling for a 100 million dollar commitment over the next four years from the
02:38government to improve treatment and research.
02:43In Northern Tasmania Alex Neville thought her symptoms were part of menopause when they
02:48appeared in 2020 and struggled to get a diagnosis.
02:52I'd never ever heard, actually never heard of endometrial cancer beforehand.
02:57I didn't know that abnormal bleeding was a sign so I didn't know to be concerned.
03:03Nothing can prepare you for hearing those words.
03:06Alex is also part of the campaign for more funding and she's passing on her experience to
03:11the next generation of doctors through a Survivors Teaching Students program, raising awareness
03:16for the importance of recognising symptoms.
03:19If we get it early enough the outcome for endometrial cancer is really positive, but you've got to
03:24get it early enough.
03:27Alex has endured 27 rounds of radiation, 13 chemotherapy cycles, immunotherapy and clinical
03:34trials.
03:36She also doesn't know how long she'll live.
03:39Involvement in the clinical trials is fabulous because it will buy me extra time, but what
03:44I'm also doing is I'm adding to science, I'm adding to knowledge.
03:47So what I'm doing now as a clinical trial will hopefully be a first line treatment for a woman
03:51in the future.
03:53I need to believe that I can hang on long enough for the science to get back on track.
04:03I want to approach this with hope, not fear.
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