My name is Kynan and I am 17 years old and I am fundraising for my mother's medical bills.

My mother, Ethel first got breast cancer when I was 12 years old (the photo is of mum and I in hospital), in December 2019. She was so strong she managed to fight it and overcome this battle and we thought this disease would be finished but in September of this year (2023), mum’s world was turned upside down again along with the whole family. Mum is a beautiful, kind, bubbly and caring person and would do anything for anyone. While mum was staying with my sister in Papua New Guinea, she became very sick again. She visited the doctors in the private hospital in Port Moresby and straight away they operated on mum only to discover that her cancer had come back very aggressively but this time it was in her liver.

They told her she now has Stage 4 liver cancer. Because the hospitals in Papua New Guinea do not have specialised cancer care facilities, the doctor told mum to go to the Philippines. Unfortunately, for us Australia was not an option because it was too expensive and we could not afford it. The treatment of her Stage 4 liver cancer was so urgent that mum had to fly there on her own with her sister.

Mum's journey has been very hard on her with the chemotherapies and the cancer drugs that she has to take. The doctors in the Philippines also found other medical complications which mum had to endure the difficult treatments for, in order to fight this deadly disease. Mum has lost a lot of weight and she is now very, very frail for her age and very weak. My mum is only 47 years old.

Mum is trying to keep strong emotionally but I can hear from her voice every time I speak to her that she is trying to be brave. Mum talks to me via audio and not video because she does not want me to see her the way she is. Because we have run out of money for the hospital care and drugs for mum, her staying in the Philippines is accumulating a lot of bills that we cannot keep up with. I know my mum made the sacrifice to go there so that I can continue to keep going to school to make her proud.

We have found out that mum’s time is now running out and all she wants is to come home. I also want to have mum home to see me graduate if that is the only time I will have with her.

Time is now of the essence and I am urgently pleading to ask your help to help my family with the costs of the medical bills and to bring mum home to see me graduate. For that our family will be forever grateful.