Sunday afternoon April 6th, 2025, another regular weekend with the twins Izzy & Lilly, who along with their Daddy, enthusiastically turn up at Nanna’s house for a sneaky afternoon of watching their beloved Bulldogs playing rugby league over a couple of pizzas.
Spirits are high, our Bulldogs are well up against the Knights in what promises to be yet another win and the usual banter is in full swing. Text messages are flying, and I am checking the nearest rivals in the work footy tipping competition in preparation for Monday morning bragging rights.
Midway through the second half, and with our bellies full. I would ironically receive a text message from my wife stating, “my bloods are fine, all good”. This was a report from the Mater emergency department in Brisbane.
Ironically, for the week prior, my beautiful wife had been complaining of some bloating, but an increasingly swollen belly for an otherwise healthy, active and passionate make-up artist living her best life was of minor concern and certainly was not raising alarm bells.
In fact, we would banter with each other about needing a “good clean out” and that I, her husband, was significantly more full of BS than anyone we knew.
However, after seeing a GP the previous week and failing to respond to the laxatives that were recommended, we sensed something else was at play.
Sapoo went to the Emergency Department at the Mater Hospital while I watched the footy and a doctor ordered a CT scan of the abdomen. Something inside me told me to go and be with my wife after the footy finished. What was to follow altered our lives forever.
I arrived at the Emergency Department and was greeted by the nurse, who said: “She is in that room, I’ll let her tell you”. Upon entering the room, our world stood still.
The blank look on my darling wife’s face is something I will take to my final days.
Knowing her genetic predisposition (BRCA1), we had subconsciously feared this day but were somewhat naïvely comforted by a clear scan only 2 years earlier.
That’s the thing with ovarian cancer; there are no pre-emptive scans of the precision or accuracy required……. there are no warning signs……there are no obvious triggers.
Thanks to the work of legions of underpaid researchers, advances in early diagnosis for gynecological cancers are slowly progressing but almost always in the shadows of advances in the more publicly recognized breast, brain & skin cancers, whose campaigns are almost impossible to miss.
We are a regular family who, within the space of two football seasons, have seen the queen of our castle, the matriarch of our family, the beat of our collective hearts, go from a healthy, happy mother and wife to someone bravely fighting ovarian cancer.
Gynecological cancer matters – it’s not someone else’s aunty, someone else’s sister, it’s now my wife.
It is ripping at the hearts of countless unassuming families without as much as a whisper of its intent. It’s a time for change, to turn the whisper into a howling wind that cannot be ignored.
This is my story, the story of a regular working-class family man in the southern suburbs of Brisbane, which we hope will further increase the awareness of gynecological cancers and inspire the efforts of many behind the scenes researchers in this field.
David Starr
Husband of the bravest woman on the planet, “My Wife”
