Carla's Story

We are thrilled by the incredible support from our Principal Partner, TerryWhite Chemmart, who raised an impressive $50,046 at last month's Masterclass for Ovarian Cancer Australia. 

TerryWhite Chemmart, our Principal Partner, consistently shows unwavering dedication through various fundraising activities, and this event was no exception! 

A special thanks to our Board Chair, Meghan Speers, and our wonderful nurses, Anna and Renee, for educating pharmacists about the vital work we do. 

We also extend heartfelt thanks and admiration to Carla, who captivated the room by sharing her personal experience with ovarian cancer that night. 

Carla Jones, a 49-year-old lawyer originally from New Zealand, now resides in regional Queensland. In September 2023, she received a diagnosis of stage 4 ovarian cancer. She completed her final round of chemotherapy in February of this year and is currently cancer free. 

In her downtime, Carla finds joy in simple pleasures like visiting dog parks. She once was an avid scuba diver and enjoys tackling hands-on projects, including her current endeavour of building a granny flat. Her circle of support is strong, comprising her loving husband, two grown children, parents, and close friends. 

During her treatment, Carla received invaluable support from Ovarian Cancer Australia (OCA), particularly from Renee, her Teal Support Program nurse. With OCA's psychosocial team, they addressed the challenges of her diagnosis together. 

Keep reading for the moving speech she delivered at the event: 

"Hi, I’m Carla. 

I’m 49 years old and originally from NZ (so you’ll have to excuse my accent and my excessive use of wool as a fabric), but I’ve been living and working in Brisbane for the last 13 years.  I’m a lawyer for a union so I spend most of my working days arguing with employers about how much money they should be giving my members and what jobs my members should be doing. 

I was born to argue for a living.  From a young age, I was arguing my way out of trouble for hitting my younger brother and getting out of parking tickets and that naturally progressed to larger family battles and then onto complex litigation, I have always been able to argue, negotiate or litigate my way out of everything. 

But in September last year, I found my achilles heel.   

I had been dealing with a UTI -  managing it at home with Hiprex and large doses of water, but it kept coming back.  It was late on a Sunday afternoon when the pain in my left side started that made me think that the UTI had moved to my left kidney.  I knew that if that was the case, that I needed urgent medical attention.  A UTI is one thing, but a kidney infection is a whole other level.  So I had my husband drive me to the Prince Charles hospital. 

No one doubted that I had a UTI but the doctor I saw thought that the symptoms I was describing were those of a kidney stone so she wanted to send me for a CT scan and then for an ultrasound. 

It was about 10:30pm while my husband was away grabbing himself something to eat that the Doctor told me that she thought I had ovarian cancer and that the cancer had already spread throughout my abdomen.  I asked her “You said you “think” it’s cancer- how sure are you?”  She replied, “About 80%.  Nothing else shows up like that on an ultrasound.” 

 I have no complaints about how that doctor interacted with me.  She was amazing and I sent her a thank you email weeks later.  I could tell when she came to tell me, that she was genuinely upset for me and didn’t want to give me the bad news. She gave me every opportunity to ask questions and then left me alone to simmer in the knowledge that I was probably going to die. 

I called my husband who was in the drive thru at KFC.  He took one bite of his dinner and threw the rest in the bin.  I’m still upset about the waste. 

About midnight on 10 September last year, I was admitted to the RBWH where test after test after test was performed. 

One doctor asked me if I had been feeling off recently.  In hindsight, I had been suffering the textbook list of symptoms for ovarian cancer, including: 

•  Persistent bloating- it was every day.  I would start the day feeling thin and feel huge by the end of it. 

• Pain in both my left and right flank and my right shoulder 

• Feeling full after only a few bites 

• Urinating frequently 

•  Changes in bowel habits 

•  Unexplained weight loss 

•  Fatigue over and above the norm 

• Pain during sex 

If only I had googled them all at the same time.  But that’s the weird thing… I wasn’t experiencing them as a cohesive set of symptoms.  They were disparate events that passed. 

No one had tried to connect the dots for me.  I hadn’t tried to connect the dots for me.  The two lymph nodes in my chest that were involved meant that I was stage 4 at diagnosis. 

Currently the survival rates for ovarian cancer are rubbish.  Only 49% of us survive past 5 years.  It is difficult for me to accept these odds and not because I’m afraid of dying… but because of what I said earlier.  I’m a natural born arguer;  I have always been able to argue, negotiate or litigate my way out of everything.  That’s what I was meant to do.  However, it seems that cancer doesn’t negotiate nor does it respond to a well thought out legal argument.  Irrespective of how good my arguments are, I can’t wiggle my way out of this one.  That’s been difficult to come to terms with.  

That’s where Ovarian Cancer Australia and Renee came to my rescue.   

I don’t remember where I first heard about OCA, I think it may have been in the resilience pack that they gave me in hospital, but that whole time in my life was just one big blur.  But I do recall the loneliness and confusion of it all.  I recall thinking- I am alone in all of this… no one is with me.  No one can experience this with me.  My husband, my kids, my parents, my friends and my extended family love me and are the best support network I could have asked for but they can’t walk this path with me.  I am alone on it. 

I recall that during one of these periods of loneliness and despair that I picked up the phone and dialled the number.   

The help I received on the end of the phone was instant.  There were no ‘if you would like to renew your subscription, press one” or “please listen to our privacy policy” recordings.  I got a real, live person on the phone who knew Ovarian Cancer and knew what they were able to do for me. 

It makes me wonder how great a call to Telstra could be if they took on board the OCA model. 

Ever since that first phone call, I have had my Renee.  Renee is my teal nurse and she contacts me regularly.  She knows that I don’t like to be called out of the blue so she texts me to see if I’d like to have a catch up later that day.  She answers my questions via text when I don’t want to talk and she sends me helpful information sheets because she knows that information is what keeps me moving forward. 

When I do want to talk, she shares a laugh with me because she knows that I rarely take life too seriously and she encourages me to live my best life.  She recently made sure that I booked myself a holiday in Fiji.  Thanks, at least in part to Renee’s encouragement, I’m celebrating my 50th on the beach in August. 

It was while I was receiving this sort of support from Renee, I underwent the first three rounds of chemo… and then on 1 December last year, I had debulking surgery which took care of my cancer in its entirety.  I then completed the final three rounds of chemo to ensure that anything that couldn’t be seen, was also taken care of. 

I am, at least for now, cancer free. 

As Meghan mentioned, PARP inhibitors have recently received PBS funding for those with an HRD diagnosis. I am one of the fortunate recipients of this development.  I have a genetic mutation in my PALB2 gene that fixes cancer cells so my immune system doesn’t recognise them as cancer and kill them.  The PARP inhibitors stop that repair from occurring.  It’s hoped that between the Olaparib that I take twice daily and the Bevacizumab that I receive 3-weekly, that I will be in remission for a long while.  I have had the good fortune to come across a lot of women who have had really good runs with remission from one or both of these drugs. 

When I was writing this speech, I was asked to reflect on how my life has changed since receiving my diagnosis.  I’m not sure I can quite capture it all. The change is immense.  Instead of being angry and cynical most of the time, I’m grateful and I cherish the time I have with the people I love.  I’ve married the love of my life- our wedding was organised in a rush and took place just 5 weeks after my diagnosis- and I’ve become much more appreciative of the little things.  I’m a long way from admitting that I’m grateful for having ovarian cancer, but I’m grateful for Ovarian Cancer Australia and I’m immensely grateful to Terry White Chemmart for being so supportive of the organisation that has held my hand throughout this horrible journey so that I don’t feel so alone. 

Without the support of these two organisations, my journey would have been awful.  I would have lacked information and because of the person I am, I need that information to get me through. I know that OCA supports other women in other ways- the way that works best for them- and that’s all made possible by your support.  

And can I also just say that throughout this journey, as you might imagine, I’ve had to call into many pharmacies to fill a prescription and now, because of the support that TerryWhite Chemmart  provides OCA, I try to find one of your franchisees  whenever I can.  And when I’ve been into those pharmacies, I’ve never felt judged, I’ve never felt unsupported, I’ve never felt like I haven’t been able to ask the weird or awkward questions- so thank you all for that.  And I always buy a teal ribbon despite having a large collection of them at home. So please keep up the good work on that front because you just never know what the person on this side of the counter is going through. 

So thank you to everyone here tonight, thank you for taking the time to listen to my story, but more importantly, thank you for helping people like me.  Thanks Renee and Ovarian Cancer Australia, and thank you to TerryWhite Chemmart."