Kellie Finlayson interview: Her bowel cancer fight and secret surrogacy efforts explored in new book There Must Be More

Kellie and Jeremy Finlayson made multiple attempts to give their daughter Sophia a sibling in late 2024.

Kellie, 29, has reflected on their efforts to expand their family in her new book, There Must Be More.

The mother-of-one is living with terminal bowel cancer, having been diagnosed with the disease when her daughter was just three months old.

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“I was craving a newborn. I so desperately wanted to give Sophia a sibling,” she writes in her book.

“I wanted nothing more than to actually get to enjoy the first year of motherhood, to rewrite the narrative.

“But I started to wonder, at what cost?”

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The couple found a surrogate who also agreed to donate an egg and made multiple efforts.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be.

“We finished that one up in December. It became more of a cost than a positive,” she told 9honey.

Kellie was diagnosed with late state bowel cancer in 2021, shortly after welcoming daughter Sophia, now three.

She and her AFL star husband were forced to cancel their elaborate future wedding plans in favour of a smaller, more timely do in March 2023, ahead of Kellie undergoing treatment for her terminal illness.

Throughout her cancer battle, Kellie has learned to use her voice to advocate for herself and others – including through her podcast Sh!t Talkers with fellow cancer sufferer Sophie Edwards, who was diagnosed with rectal cancer in 2022.

“It’s really hard as a woman, in general, to be taken seriously sometimes,” Kellie said.

“So finding that, I guess, middle ground and working out what was respectful, but then also what was good for me as well, was really important.

“I think I wouldn’t have found the courage to do that had I not started to share my story and almost ‘talk the talk’, in terms of trying to encourage other people to advocate for themselves.

“I wouldn’t have had to walk the walk myself if I hadn’t, I guess, put that image out there.”

She can see glimpses of those same traits in her daughter, whom she describes as “incredibly resilient and intuitive”.

“She just knows what to say at the right times,” Kellie said.

“Like, for example, one of my friend’s daughters, who’s Sophia’s age, has just had a surgery recently and obviously, being a mum, you’re pretty scared to put your daughter under an anesthetic.

“But Sophia, being the medical child that she is now, was so comforting and they came home and she’s giving her a cuddle and saying, ‘It’s OK, don’t be sad, the doctors are clever.’

“And I’m like, ‘How are you a three-year-old consoling a 20-something-year-old?

“It just blew my mind and everyone in the room was like, ‘Did that just happen?’ It makes me so proud of whatever I’ve done to raise her this far.”

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Kellie’s cancer treatment is ongoing.

“I’m on oral chemotherapy and a blood targeting immunotherapy,” she said.

“I just do chemo every day, which is interesting, and immuno every three weeks … so this treatment’s, honestly, I don’t want to say easy, because it’s not easy, but in comparison to what I’ve been through it’s easy.”

Next, Kellie will head home to Adelaide and then off to a holiday in Bali with her daughter before embarking on more advocacy work.

“It’s just here, there, and everywhere promoting the book, encouraging the right people to get their hands on it, hoping that I can give a bit of insight into even medical professionals,” she said.

She doesn’t expect Jeremy will read her book, for now at least.

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“No, I don’t think he will,” she said.

“[It’s] quite confronting for him. I mean, I don’t think he’s ever read a book in his life, but also it’s, what’s within that book is the worst year of his life.”

When it comes to supporting loved ones with cancer, Kellie has important insights to share.

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“Don’t ask if you don’t want the answer is probably one piece of advice,” she said.

“If you don’t want to know how they are feeling, don’t ask them how they’re feeling … but then also doing the jobs that you don’t want to do yourself.”

Kellie said she always appreciated help with maintaining her home, but preferred to care for Sophia herself, whom she’d already lost so much time with.

“That small child that they’ve already lost so much time with is who they want to be spending time with. They don’t want to be doing the washing while you look after the child, if it makes sense,” she said.

“I think I’m very lucky in a sense that they were very good at reading me.”

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