33 year old Mum and Wife with Bowel Cancer

My little sister, Melissa is a 33 yr old wife to Jak and a Mum to two small children Luna 7 and Lakyn 3. At 32 years old, a week before her 33rd birthday, Melissa was diagnosed with bowel cancer.

When Melissa wasn’t caring for their two children she was studying part time to be an educational support worker and working casually at a workwear retail store. Sadly being casual Melissa had no sick leave and had to leave the job she loved and put her studies on hold.

Just recently Melissa’s husband Jak's work has finished up. They currently have no income coming in at all and have found this already stressful time even more stressful now.

They have had to move out of their family home that they lived and rented in for 7 years and move into Jak’s parent’s house.

While this helps massively with them, it doesn’t take off the financial stress of everyday bills, medical bills, and groceries.

Centrelink have been a nightmare to deal with along with Melissa’s super fund trying to access any sort of money. Both companies have said it could be 6-12 months before they see any financial help whatsoever. Melissa hasn’t been able to work since February.

The uncertainty of how long Jak will be off work to care for Melissa and the children is unknown so I’m asking if there’s anything anyone can spare to help this beautiful family out and ease their financial burden while they navigate through this already hard time even if it’s just $5 that you would spend on a morning coffee.

We don’t know what her future holds but knowing this may help their financial stress would take a lot of pressure off. They would be using these funds to feed their children, pay their bills, pay for petrol to help get Melissa to appointments, pay for Melissa’s medical bills and medication.

Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you

Here is a background story of Melissa’s cancer journey:

In November 2023, She went to hospital with severe rectal bleeding, thinking she was going to be leaving being told it was just haemorrhoids but instead she was booked in for an urgent colonoscopy and had to stay in hospital for some time due to a significant amount of blood loss.

This urgent colonoscopy got lost in the system and as time went on Melissa panicked as she was still bleeding.

3 months later the hospital got her in for a colonoscopy.

February 2024, She woke from the colonoscopy to the news they had found a large fungating tumor growing through her large colon along with 20 pre cancerous polyps.

In March 2024, Melissa had surgery known as a total colectomy where her entire large colon was removed. They also removed her surrounding lymph nodes to be tested for cancer cells to see if it had spread. Melissa has been struggling with her new life without a colon and this has caused many mental setbacks for her and her family.

Melissa’s lymph nodes had come back positive with cancer cells and she would need to undergo aggressive chemotherapy as soon as her 6 week post op recovery was done.

Melissa has also been referred to Peter Mac for genetic testing. This will impact their children and what it means for the kids as they grow up whether they need early testing and colonoscopies from 16.

April 2024 Melissa began chemotherapy. It knocked her down straight away and her husband Jak has become her full time carer along with caring for their two small children. He’s now taken on the roll of both parents doing school drop off, house chores, groceries and everything that a parent does.

Melissa is on folfox chemo where she’s connected for 4-6 hours at the oncology clinic and then comes home connected to a chemotherapy bottle for 46 hours and then struggles for the next 14 days and repeats.

Any little bit of money would help this family greatly.

Bowel cancer is Australia’s deadliest cancer for those aged 25-44 years old.

Know the symptoms and get checked out!!