00:00I felt dizziness and I felt faint at work one time so I made the appointment with my GP.
00:06She thought it was vertigo. When I came out to the car after being in that appointment with my mum
00:12I turned to her and I said that I had a brain tumour and my mum just went grace that's
00:19not
00:19happening. I just I had a feeling when my cancer was found it was a stage four so I'd waited
00:28even
00:28just weeks I may not be here. A lot of the time all of those specialists are up in major
00:41hospitals
00:41in the capitals and that can be really difficult to get to. I had radiotherapy every day. If I was
00:50travelling from home that would have been a two-hour journey and then the same back and when you're
00:57feeling nauseous when you have the effects of chemo and the cancer itself it would have been too much.
01:05One of my nurses mentioned the You Can Stay program and it honestly it it sounded too good to be
01:12true.
01:13What do you mean somebody's going to pay for an apartment in Sydney? I wouldn't have been able
01:18to do treatment without it. That meant that I had my mum with me. I had daily radiotherapy
01:25when I had to do an IVF round she administered every needle. You know sometimes I was having five
01:31needles a day. She would make sure that I had something small to eat even though I didn't feel
01:37like eating at all. I wouldn't have been able to do it without her. Even with my mum there constantly
01:44there was a point in time where my treatment was almost too much and I asked to stop it.
01:51There's a common feeling throughout patients and survivors once their treatment is done
01:57and it's called the now what feeling. Now what? You've been through cancer, you've had this
02:05experience that has changed you, you know, mind and body like forever. Advocacy for me helps me find
02:14reason and purpose in that way. I'm not the only one it's happening to. This is happening again and
02:20again. Like even now there are more people who have just been diagnosed with a life-changing cancer
02:25and so having that space to draw attention to it as time goes on even if it's just a small
02:34percentage
02:34age it will continue to get better for the people after me.
02:46you
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