'I went to my doctor looking 7 months pregnant. They told me it was untreatable cancer.'

For Sue Barclay, a mother of four and farmer from rural NSW, she can pinpoint the exact moment her world came tumbling down. 

The then 49-year-old had been in Sydney for her daughter’s university graduation and she’d stayed on for a friend’s wedding. They’d danced, drank, ate and “had a lovely evening”. 

It was April 2022, and the last night Sue would ever have without the fear of death hanging over her. 

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“When I got home from the wedding around midnight, I did make a comment to myself that, ‘God, I'm glad I wore elastic pants’, because I felt really bloated,” the now 50-year-old told Mamamia. 

But feeling fine, she went to bed. The next day she got up, flew home and had dinner. 

“It was about 10pm when I went to have a shower,” Sue said. “When I got out, it looked like I was seven months pregnant.

“I don’t know if it was women’s intuition..but I just knew that it wasn’t good.”

While Sue said she’d always been healthy and “was never sick”, she did have an “irritating cough” at the time but put that down to harvest dust. 

Sue, a farmer from rural NSW, thought her "irritating" cough was the result of harvest dust. Image: Supplied.

But when she saw the bloating, it sent her into a panic attack.

“I've never had a panic attack before,” Sue explained. “I just couldn't get my breath and found an old valium in the cupboard and I took it to calm myself down.” 

The next morning she made an appointment at the local GP in the town of 2,000 people.

“I said I want an X-ray, and he said, ‘How about we do an X-ray and we'll do a full blood count’, and I said ‘I want my cancer levels checked too’.”

Because in the front of Sue’s mind, alarm bells were ringing. 

In 2009, her father had died of pancreatic cancer. And one of his symptoms had been bloating.

A family history of cancer.

“We did the blood test and normal cancer levels are under 30 or 35,” Sue explained. “Mine came back at 2,100, so sh*t got pretty real pretty quick.”

Then came the CT scan. But because it was Easter and then Anzac Day, with all the public holidays, the family faced an agonising wait for results. 

“It was just pretty mind-numbing to be honest,” Sue said. 

The initial diagnosis came back as lung and peritoneal cancer, and the mother of four went on to have 740 millilitres of fluid drained from her chest. But from that fluid, they could test for a primary cause of cancer.

It was stage four ovarian cancer, which for Sue and her family was a huge slap in the face because in 2018 — after testing positive for the BRACA (or breast cancer) gene which increases the risk of ovarian cancer — Sue had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed.

“When dad passed away in 2009, we didn't know any of this BRCA gene business back then,” Sue explained. “And my auntie, my dad’s sister, had been battling cancer for about 50 years with breast and endometrium. 

“It was her grandson, who had been working in genetics at the time, who suggested she should have these tests for the gene. The results came back positive so my sister and I got tested as well, and they came back positive too.  

While Sue and her sister felt they could keep an eye on their breasts with regular mammograms and ultrasounds, there was “no way of keeping an eye on the ovarian side of things”. 

“So I opted to have my ovaries and tubes out,” Sue said, “and low and behold four years later I get ovarian cancer, so that's pretty shit."

"The local hairdressers very kindly locked the door when I went in, shaved it for me and told me that I looked beautiful, and I walked out with no hair," Sue said. Image: Supplied.

The gift of hope.

With a new diagnosis of ovarian cancer, Sue said the local doctor in town was stumped.  

“He got the report and all he could say was, ‘I'm so sorry, I’m so sorry’,” she explained. “He sent my urgent referral to the regional hospital but all he could say was, ‘I'm so sorry’, and I thought, Christ, you're gonna have to give me more than that. But he didn’t.”

So Sue waited and waited for the regional hospital to offer her an appointment. 

“The timing felt like it was an eternity,” she said. “And I believed my days were numbered.”

Then, nearly a month after she had first been diagnosed, a school friend recommended the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney. 

“I was put in touch with them and they said, ‘Can you be down here on Monday?’, and I said, ‘My word, I can be down there on Monday’,” Sue said. 

After a seven-hour drive, Sue was admitted to the oncology ward 

“My surgeon walked in with a bundle of energy and asked me 100 questions and said, ‘You'll have three chemos and then we'll operate and you'll have three chemos after that and then you'll probably be on tablets for a couple of years,” she said.  

“I remember saying to him, ‘Years?’, and he said, ‘Yup, why, what's wrong with that?’. And I said, ‘Nothing, but I pretty well had one leg in the grave when I left home so if you're talking about years, I'll stick with you’.

“And he said, ‘Well, I don't see why you can't be here in a couple of years’. I just remember looking at my husband like, oh my god.”

Listen to the hosts of Mamamia Daily discuss a woman who found out she had cancer on the day of her hens party. Post continues after the podcast.

Sue said it was the gift of hope.

“I left home with no plan, no vision, I had nothing,” she explained. “I didn't know what I was going to have ahead of me. Then in a matter of two hours of being admitted, I had a plan and I knew exactly what the next six to 12 months was vaguely going to look like.

“And more importantly, I had hope. I actually didn’t have that when I left home, so to be given that hope at the beginning of the journey gave me the courage to give it a good shot.”

The 10,000km trip for treatment.

Four days later, Sue started chemo. 

“I said to the oncologist, ‘Is it serious?’ and she said, ‘Sue, you've got cancer and it is bad, we may not be able to cure you but we aim to monitor and maintain’. 

“That was hard to hear and I had a little cry but my husband — who's got type one diabetes — just said, ‘They can't cure me but they've been monitoring and maintaining me for 30-odd years, so it's okay, we just keep going.

“When it was put into that context, I pulled my head in and started seven hours of chemo.”

The next day she was discharged, and Sue and her husband headed home on Friday afternoon — a seven-hour drive that the two would go on to complete more than 17 times over the next year. 

Every three weeks, the pair would make the 10,000 kilometre round trip from the bush to Sydney in time for Sue’s treatment before turning around the next day in order to get home before the side effects of the chemo kicked in.

When floods trapped the family on their property last year, a neighbour picked up Sue in a helicopter so she could get to Sydney for treatment. Image: Supplied.

An air evacuation.

After four bouts to shrink the cancer, and a brush with COVID that heartbreakingly delayed her operation, Sue finally had surgery to remove it. Amid all of this, the family was facing raging flood waters at their doorstep. 

“The house was an island for about three months,” Sue said, “and the only way we could get out at that stage was by kayaking through the floodwaters to the vehicles on the other side.”

But by the time Sue needed her fifth chemo, she was still healing from her operation and unable to kayak across the water. Luckily she had the entire community behind her.  

“When the neighbours heard that I was sick, they immediately got in touch and said if you ever need us to get you out, just let us know,” she said. 

“So I called in that favour and they were there straightaway to help.”

Landing 20 metres from the family’s home, Sue’s neighbour arrived in a helicopter to pick her up and bring her over to the vehicles parked on dry land so she could make the journey to Sydney.  

“The love and support we’ve had from everyone is just beautiful,” Sue said. 

“We’ve got a great community out here and a great group of friends who constantly check in on us — the whole family — which is really special. It’s just been so humbling and uplifting that we’ve got that support.”

Sue broke the bell while celebrating the end of her chemo treatment. Image: Supplied

A second chance.

After six rounds of chemo, Sue finished up in October and rang the oncology ward’s bell so hard that she broke it. 

She’s now halfway through 16 rounds of targeted therapy in a bid to stop the cancer cells from growing and spreading. This is delivered through a portacath in her chest because her veins “were shutting down from the amount of chemo”. 

Every three months, she undergoes a scan, and has blood taken every few weeks to monitor the situation. It’s a constant bout of anxiety for the mum of four, but these days she’s trying to look to the future instead.

“I was so focused on just getting through last year but there are more days now that I don't even think about it, like I just feel normal,” she told Mamamia. “I'm certainly not out in the cattle or sheep yards but I did a couple of hours on the tractor during sowing time.

“On the bad days it's like, why me, why me,” she said. “But then on the good days, it's like, well why not. There's always someone worse off than me. Everyone's got their own battles. Whether it's cancer or other problems, everyone's got their own story. 

“I just wish I didn't have a story.”

"Stu has just been so bloody beautiful," Sue said of her husband. "He's probably had to do stuff that I never thought he'd have to do for me but he's just been a 120 per cent supportive of me. And I couldn’t have done it without him and the kids." Image: Supplied.

But these days, Sue’s mind is elsewhere. She’s busy preparing for the weddings of her son and daughter. 

“Hopefully, I will be there,” she said. “Celebrating that with them.

“12 months ago, I didn’t think that was going to happen, so to have that chance to watch them get married, I owe that to the Royal Women’s.”

You can donate here to the Royal Hospital for Women Foundation’s largest annual fundraiser, Heart for Her, which will raise money for medical equipment and treatment for women. 

Image: Supplied + Mamamia. 

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