Our mum should be celebrating her 50th birthday this March, instead, she is preparing to start one of the toughest battles of her life: fighting Stage 3 Breast Cancer.

In February 2025, our mum Vera was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer. Like any other family after hearing this news, we were shocked, but ready to fight it together.

Since then, her journey has become more difficult than we ever imagined.

After undergoing a major surgery - double mastectomy with reconstruction, doctors discovered that the cancer has spread to her lymph nodes, meaning it has now progressed to Stage 3 Breast Cancer. This means the cancer is likely to continue spreading throughout her body, with the next possible areas being liver, bones, lungs, and the brain.

She is now preparing to begin intensive chemotherapy, which will take a huge physical and emotional toll. To see someone you love, someone who always has a smile on her face and goes out of her way to make everyone else happy, slowly lose their energy and struggle with even the simple tasks of everyday life is incredibly painful. I can’t even begin to imagine how she must feel going through this herself.

To make things even harder, doctors have told her she won’t even be able to celebrate her 50th birthday on 19th of March this year because of the intensity of the treatment she’s about to start.

We are raising funds to help give our mum access to a treatment that may save her life, Supportive Oligonucleotide Therapy (SOT). It’s a treatment that is designed to target cancer at the genetic level. Unfortunately, this treatment is not covered by medicare or insurance and comes with significant costs.

Each SOT treatment costs roughly $5,000, and it needs to be repeated every 6-9 months for the next 5 years to give her the best possible chance of slowing or stopping the spreading of the cancer. That’s around $50,000!

Our goal of $20,000 will help cover the first treatments and give our mum the best possible chance to start this therapy.

Any support, no mater how small, would mean the world to our family. If you are unable to donate, simply sharing this page would help a lot more than you know.

Thank you for helping give our mum the best chance to celebrate many more birthdays and be there for all the milestones still to come.