As soon as mum-of-three Liv Curtis locked eyes with her doctor, she knew she was not going to hear good news.
Choosing her words carefully, Liv’s doctor gently told her they had discovered a tumour the size of a full-term baby wrapped around her internal organs.
Devastated, Liv struggled to take in what she was hearing, but she knew that in many ways it made sense of her on-going symptoms.
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After the birth of her third baby, she never really recovered, but attributed problems like a weak bladder, pain during sex, menstrual-like cramping and excessive tiredness to chasing after three children.
Liv thought an iron transfusion or a shot of vitamin B-12 might be a “quick fix” and boost her energy levels, but nothing worked.
“I was able to still run after them at the park but I couldn’t stay awake past 7pm,” she explains.
“You never think you have cancer, that is irrational.”
But one night her husband Kevin wrapped his arms around her and noticed a firm lump in her stomach.
An MRI uncovered a large mass in her abdomen and prompted Liv to make a quick call to her friend who was working as a student obstetrician-gynaecologist at Sydney Adventist Hospital.
“I just had this feeling of doom sitting on my chest,” Liv says.
Her friend made some calls and booked Liv in with a hospital specialist and further scans confirmed the dreaded news. The tumour was cancerous.
“She (doctor) came in and asked me what symptoms I had been having,” Liv recalls.
“She was so lovely and she had tears in her eyes.
“She just said, ‘I am so sorry, I think you have ovarian cancer’.”
Liv says the moment she heard the word cancer, she felt as though she was falling through the floor.
Sobbing uncontrollably, everything became “white noise”.
The 3kg tumour, which had its own blood supply, quickly gained the nickname of her “uninvited guest”.
“It was like a full-term baby,” she says.
“But my doctors called it an octopus because it was just wrapped around everything.”
The specialist wasted no time, gathered five of his most skilled friends and colleagues and told Liv they were going to operate.
Surrounded by six surgeons, Liv was whisked into a ten-hour procedure removing her ovaries, uterus, cervix, 50cm of her bowel, part of her liver, omentum, and spleen.
The first thing Liv recalls as she began to wake up from the anaesthesia was Kevin whispering in her ear: “They got it all”.
It was the news she needed.
After three and a half weeks in ICU, Liv was discharged from hospital.
She threw herself into rehabilitation and therapies and after losing her hair due to chemotherapy, invested in some beautiful scarves and wigs.
“I realised that I could not stop,” Liv says.
“The world was going to keep going without me so I just … did life.
“I remember telling them kids over dinner that there was a monster inside me that the doctors took out, and I had to take some funny medication now which will make my hair fall out.
“After that my youngest would ask me if I was going to, ‘Wear my hair today’. That was hard to hear.”
Over the next four years Liv has had two relapses, prompting numerous surgeries.
Each time, the brave mum has held her head high, but admits she has spent a lot of time quivering with fear.
“I had some incredibly dark days going round in my head, like, ‘How do I say goodbye to my children?’,” Liv confesses.
But as she overcame each new health battle, Liv said she became determined to help others in the same position as her.
These days, she spends a lot of time advocating for more research and more investment into women’s health.
“I feel strongly that I am going to be here for a long time,” she says, knowing that ovarian cancer funding and research is needed.
“I want all women to have the same opportunities as me,” Liv says of the top-tier medical care she received.
“I am living proof that research and funding is what saves lives.”
Liv is an ambassador for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation helping improve the lives of other women living with ovarian cancer.