Turning family loss into hope for the future

“Who don’t I know in terms of family and then friends [diagnosed with cancer]? It starts back with my mother at age 14 losing her mother to uterine cancer.”

Karen’s family has been impacted more than most from cancer. With the BRCA 1 gene carried through her family from her mother’s side, the women have been especially affected.

“My mother was the first female [in her family] to make it past 60,” she said. “They all died of cancer.”

Karen and her younger sisters were lucky to not carry the breast cancer gene, but most of her cousins on her mother’s side have died from the disease. She even lost her father to leukaemia at 79.

For Karen, this has led to a lifelong passion for supporting women and backing cancer research, which she sees as an absolute urgency.

“When I first became involved with Cancer Council Victoria, it was around the research designed for fertility for young girls who had gone through chemotherapy with leukaemia and had lost the opportunity to have babies,” she shared.

The advancements already made in cancer research and the promise they hold for future generations has inspired Karen to leave a gift in her Will to fund research into the future.

“I like to imagine a time when you don’t die of cancer, you simply die of old age,” she added.