In May 2017 our amazing, strong, beautiful Mum was diagnosed with Stage 4 Melanoma.

Melanoma is a type of skin cancer which usually occurs on parts of the body that have been overexposed to the sun. In mums case we will never know where the primary skin lesion was and it has spread and created a mass under her left arm which causes constant pain and a decreased range of movement. Mum under went weeks of intense radiation therapy and began on the miracle drug, Keytruda. Keytuda is an immunetherapy treatment that aims to treat cancer by working with your immune system.

The combination of these two treatments have kept the cancer at bay from a PET scan point of view however Keytruda has decided to stop working for mum, causing lesions on her lung to develop that are not cancer lesions but are due to the drug. Its causing mums lung function to worsen, making her short of breath a lot of the time and has for now given mums specialists no choice but to stop treatment.

This journey so far has been an absolute rollercoaster and has now become even scarier. We have huge faith in the Melanoma Institute Australia research team to come up with a cure however they need our help!! Melanoma March is an annual fundraising campaign to support melanoma research.

We, the van Zijl family, are marching (walking) in Coolangata on Sunday 4th of March at 6:30am to bring together the Melanoma community to raise awareness and funds for Melanoma research. Our team is called Kia Kaha Mum, which means Stay Strong Mum in Maori. If you would like to join our team and walk with us on the day, or just donate, please click the link below!

To wrap this novel up, we would like to thank you all for your love and support through the past almost 12 months, we are so lucky to have family and friends like you guys. We look forward to seeing you all in Coolangata!!

Kia Kaha Mum, we can beat this sun of a bitch. X

 

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Thanks so much for your support!