Date of Diagnosis: September 2017
Age at Diagnosis: 32
Country: Canada
I am: the mother of a beautiful 3 year old girl, a wife, a Kindergarten behaviour and special needs teacher, a sister, a daughter
The cancer was found when: My husband and I went to a fertility clinic in attempts to have a sibling for our daughter. An ultrasound picked up a strange mass in my uterus, which I was told was probably just a fibroid. After two surgeries, I was diagnosed with metastatic low grade ovarian cancer.
How your donations would impact me: New treatments could mean I could be here for my daughter for longer. I’ve been told it’s most likely I will have a dramatically shortened life span, which has altered our family’s plans for the future. Your donations would help fund research that could lead to new treatments and hopefully a cure for this terrible disease.
What I’d say to someone else going through this: Be gentle to yourself. Allow yourself to cry. To be angry, to say it’s unfair. Time has a way of eventually dulling the pain and allowing you to go on, even when you think you won’t be able to.
“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” – Samuel Beckett
-Amy Macrae
Update: Amy passed away peacefully on June 1, 2020. Donations and messages of support can be made to her Living Legacy.
September 2020: Amy Macrae’s hauteningly beautiful insights into life with incurable low-grade serous ovarian cancer have been short listed as one of 5 finalists for the CBC 2020 Non Fiction Prize.