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I Will Go On

Amy playing with her daughter

Name: Amy

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 an attempt 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

Update, Amy passed away peacefully on June 1, 2020. Donations and messages of support can be made to her Living Legacy.

In September 2020 Amy Macrae’s insights into life with incurable low-grade serous ovarian cancer were short-listed as one of 5 finalists for the CBC 2020 Non Fiction Prize.

We are grateful to Amy for sharing her experience with low-grade serous ovarian cancer and for helping us raise awareness. If you would like to share your story too, find out more here.