Jodi McRae

Jodi – “In May 2013 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Back then my eldest, Kaela was 16 and we were watching a program on TV and Angelina Jolie came on and spoke about her choice to have a double mastectomy because she had the gene. Kaela’s grandmother on her fathers side had had breast cancer. I had no history of it on my side so I said ‘you are never too young to start checking.’ She was 16 at that stage and I walked away and thought ‘your a bloody hypocrite! I don’t check and here I am telling her to. I went in and had a shower and straight away I found this lump. I knew straight away that it wasn’t good. So the process started from there. I had the scans which came back not good and it was very early detection.
I was given the choice to have a mastectomy or have the double and I made the choice.. I wasn’t worried about having the double, I didn’t want it coming back and it’s funny because I was a boob girl before that. So I had the double mastectomy and I found out that the type of cancer that I had was a Triple Negative which out of the two was the bad one. At that stage it wasn’t in my lymph nodes but they suggested that I have chemo. So I had the reconstruction at the same time as the mastectomy, had the chemo and lost all my hair and I got the all clear, this was the end of 2013.
I started getting a few symptoms, like I was finding it hard to breathe, I was a bit wheezy and there were lumps coming up in my head and in November 2014 I was re-diagnosed with secondary breast cancer. It had spread to all of my major organs. It was in my liver, lungs, scalp, ovaries, some in my spine so it was basically everywhere and it was a rare, aggressive cancer. So I underwent chemo again and that time I didn’t lose my hair. I react really well to chemo and I got rid of it all again. That lasted 5 weeks and then the lumps were back in my head again which is a random spot to show up but lucky as we have early signs. We did chemo again immediately which was about 12 weeks ago,and got the all clear again.
We went to America for a month for a family holiday. I also have a son Jake who’s just about to turn 16. We came home and the lumps were back again. I had the scans about 6 weeks ago and it’s back in my lungs, liver and scalp so I’m now having a more aggressive form of chemo, hence why I’ve lost my hair. That’s my story so far, where I am now.
They class it as being incurable and they say that it’s terminal. We keep fighting on and because it’s a rare, aggressive form there’s not been many trials or research done. They’re getting such a good success rate with hormone driven cancer but unfortunately with mine there’s not. I get really tired but I haven’t been unwell.
We have five businesses between here and the Gold Coast but that’s what I love. It’s my passion and the people around it. I’m so lucky, I have 26 staff now and the friendship and the care that I’ve got through my staff and my family and friends is what keeps me going. I was a single mum when I was diagnosed and in-between one of the treatments I met my now partner and we’ve been together 12 months. He’s very supportive, he shaved his head last night when it came time for me to shave mine which made it a bit easier for me.

I suppose the thing that has upset me this time is that this might be a treatment I’m on on until I die and the thought that I’m going to be bald until I die for me is scary. I don’t want people to remember me this way because it’s only the visual thing and for my kids and family it’s the hardest part for me because you don’t want them to think of you as being sick. It’s not how I want to be remembered because we are so much more than that. The first time I was bald I wasn’t so worried, I didn’t wear a wig much and you know what, if it’s a way of creating awareness that people look or they ask questions and we can get that message out there that early detection is what saves lives. If I hadn’t found my cancer when I did I would be dead already.
So how ‘Jodies Inspiration’ came about is I had so many people offer to do fundraisers for me to help out, I’m not wealthy but I’m lucky enough to be able to get out of work when I need to and a lot of people don’t have that. I would rather people put their energy and their money into something that is going to help everyone as a whole. The constant offering of help and support was just amazing and I felt guilty that if I didn’t do something by using the profile that I had as far as business to take advantage of peoples generosity in a sense. So for me everything is about fun and living life large. That’s my motto! We’ve always had a Halloween party at home where everyone has a ball so my partner came up with the idea of Pink Halloween. Soon as we put the word out it’s just been full on so we’ve sold close on 600 tickets at $65 a head and that’s on tomorrow night.
I wanted to do something for more of the emotional journey, you sit up in the oncology units and you see people older than myself that you can tell are really traumatised by losing their hair and it’s about who you are. When you have cancer and you lose your hair. There’s no escaping it! This morning I was at the square and a little boy maybe 4, straight away..Mum! Mum! and pointed at me. He’s a little boy and has no idea but it’s like ‘that lady looks really strange’. You can never escape cancer when you have no hair. A lot of people can’t afford wigs.
I’d read about a Cold Cap Therapy machine and there’s not one between Newcastle and The Gold Coast. They are $40,000 and to me that’s something that hospitals won’t be able to put money towards. We came up with the idea of, well you know if that can help one person not lose their hair and feel a bit more alive going through it, we’ve done our job. The machine prevents hair loss whilst going through chemo. That’s our first thing! Our next thing we want to do with any money that we have left over or that we raise in the future is going toward brightening up the palliative care rooms.
My thing is that I would die in hospital in Palliative Care because I don’t want my family to go back to the family home and be faced with that everyday that they walk in the door with …that’s where mum died or that’s where Jodi died. I got enough courage and I went there 2 weeks ago and the rooms are so drab and boring. So for me, even if its a coat of paint, putting play stations in for the kids. Ive lost 2 very close friends with young kids. There are so many people with young children, the kids need some creature comforts, board games, anything. Lets face it if you are going to die you want it to be the best that it possibly can be. I said to Garth the unit manager at St Vincent’s who is a gem as are all the girls there…. ‘There’s no way I’m dying here, it’s going to be looking like a 5 star hotel before I do this!.’ We have the McGrath Foundation who do a wonderful job. We have all the money that goes toward research and most is around breast cancer. There are so many different cancers that people are dying from and being effected by.