TEAM LILLY 🌻

For 15+ years, I've been the nurse.

I've held hands, calmed nerves, and sat with women while they cried about how they felt in their own skin. I built my clinic in Penrith on one belief: when people feel cared for, they heal differently.

Then this year, I became the patient.

My biopsies showed DCIS, an early, "contained" breast cancer. I had a double mastectomy with reconstruction and thought I was doing the hard part so I could move on.

I wasn't. The pathology came back, and the surgeons had found an aggressive HER2-positive tumour, bigger than anyone expected. It was in my lymph node too.

Since then I've had a chemo port put in my chest. On my first 2 rounds of chemotherapy, I ended up getting too sick. Which then became a medical emergency and kept for a week each time (they were worried about sepsis). Ive had a full blood transfusion and iron infusions And the business I spent a decade building now sees me one or two days every three weeks, if I'm lucky - and that is usually for training and meetings.

I'm a mum of two little boys. Some days the hardest part isn't the treatment. It's trying to look okay at the dinner table. I know that they dont need to be sheltered, but the pain I see in their faces when they are reminded that I am having chemotherapy done for cancer.

My hair is falling out, my body is changing, I have scars on my face from the cysts that came up after the 2nd chemo hospital admission (that one was scary).

Here's what I know now, from both sides of the bed: medicine treats the cancer, but nurses carry you through it. They explain what's happening when you're too scared to ask, and they notice when you're not okay. They help your family feel less lost.

That's why I'm fundraising to help fund more McGrath Cancer Care Nurses, because care for all takes a nation.

Every day, 450 people in Australia are diagnosed with cancer. Behind every diagnosis is a person, a family and a community whose lives are changed in an instant. I know, because one of them is mine.

McGrath Cancer Care Nurses provide free clinical, emotional and psychosocial support to people with any type of cancer and their families. Your donation helps fund more of them, so more people can get the care they need when they need it most.

Whether you give $5 or $500, thank you for helping make care possible.

Lauren 💗