2 weeks Ago
Kaela Graham-Bowman was 29 when she started experiencing a sharp hip pain that stretched down to her knee. She brushed it off as a sports injury, or one of the many aches and pains from her career in the Australian military. Just 18 months later she was diagnosed with stage-three cancer.
When the mother of two finally went to see a doctor, her diagnosis was almost immediate: she had a rare form of sarcoma that surgeons deemed inoperable. It took everything Kaela had to fight off the cancer the first time - but two years after being given a clean bill of health, the illness metastasised in her lungs. Her long journey back to health saw Kaela become so unwell she dropped down to just 43kg (6st and 11lbs) and 'literally felt the life leaving my body'.
Kaela, an emergency department nurse from Canberra, is currently stage-four metastatic and has to take oral chemotherapy for the foreseeable future. 'I used to be in the military, so I just thought I had bad hips when the pain started. But I was also working out five days a week, so I was very healthy,' she tells me.
Her pain turned to panic when a lump popped on her thigh, seemingly overnight. Kaela Graham-Bowman (pictured with her children) was 29 years old when she started experiencing a sharp hip pain that stretched down to her knee. It turned out to be cancer 'If I didn't have my kids, there's no way I would've have fought as hard as I had,' Kaela says She thought it was a torn muscle as first, but scheduled an appointment with her general practitioner to make sure.
'He sent me for an ultrasound, and everything went downhill from there. I was an oncology nurse at the time but I'd never heard of sarcoma before - it's so rare. It only affects one per cent of adult cancers and ten per cent of childhood cancers.
' Sarcoma is a type of cancer that can occur in different parts of the body and begins in the connective tissues, such as bone and cartilage. Scientists don't know exactly what causes most soft..
. Shania Obrien.
