‘Without her I would have been dead years ago’: Kellie Finlayson’s tribute to toddler daughter amid cancer battle

Kellie Finlayson has a hectic schedule promoting her new book, There Must Be More

Watching from the outside, you’d never know she’s living with terminal bowel cancer, and has been for the past three years.

“I wish that resting for a couple of weeks was an option,” Kellie told 9honey on the morning of our interview as she checked out of a hotel and jumped into a taxi.

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“I just make sure that I always schedule in an hour of rest each day,” she added

The 29-year-old is the wife of AFL star Jeremy Finlayson and the couple are parents to a toddler daughter, Sophia.

Kellie was three months post-partum when she was given the devastating news she had late stage bowel cancer –and she says her daughter has given her a bigger reason to push forward and create a legacy.

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Kellie credits her daughter with giving her a will to live as she navigated oftentimes brutal treatment, which has included multiple surgeries and rounds of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

“Without her, I would have been dead years ago, so she’s definitely been the purpose,” Kellie said.

“It’s really easy to lay in bed and feel sorry for yourself when you’ve got nothing to do.

“But when you’ve got a one-and-a-half-year=old that wants to get up and go outside and only wants Mummy, you kind of don’t really get to say ‘no’.”

Since her diagnosis, Kellie has forged an even stronger bond with her own mother, who moved in with the couple to help care for Sophia and Kellie following her diagnosis.

“Sophia’s mum was basically my mum for those first 12 months,” she said.

The diagnosis explained years of symptoms Kellie had been experiencing, which included digestive issues and constipation as well as blood in her stools.

“Once you get the diagnosis, you go back and realise how many years you’ve been struggling with it, but I thought I was lactose intolerant, coeliac,” she said.

She did all the right things, booking herself in for an elective colonoscopy that was postponed due to the COVID pandemic.

By the time the cancer was found, it was well advanced.

“Yes, bowel cancer is a big part of why I’m advocating … but I’m more than just a disease.”

Kellie knows she is living on borrowed time, and is intent on ensuring she saves as many lives as possible while creating important memories with her husband and child.

Her book is an open and honest account of what can only be described as a blessed life, right up until her diagnosis.

Husband Jeremy gives his own account of key moments during his wife’s cancer battle in the book, too.

One of his memories includes bursting into tears at a friend’s home while picking up their daughter Sophia after the couple had been given some particularly devastating news.

But who she is outside of cancer is important to her.

“Obviously, yes, bowel cancer is a big part of, I guess, why I’m advocating and it is a big part of my book, but it’s not the whole part of the book,” she explained.

“I’m more than just a disease.”

Bowel cancer is the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer in Australia, and it is estimated one in 20 people will be diagnosed by the time they are 85, according to the Cancer Council Australia.

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The average age of bowel cancer diagnosis in Australia is generally around 69 years for males and 71 years for females.

Kellie was just 25 when she was diagnosed.

“It doesn’t discriminate, age, gender, what you’ve done in life, if you’re a prisoner or if you’re a saint,” she said.

“That’s the biggest thing that I want people to know.”

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She describes the process of writing the book with author Alley Pascoe as “really quite cathartic”.

“There was a lot that I’d obviously forgotten about. It’s really easy to forget things that are hard in your life,” she said.

“It was lucky Ally was working on it with me, because she was able to do the background work and reminds me of things that I’d gone through, I guess.

“Then we would just delve deeper and find the emotions that were happening at those times.

“We also went to a lot of the people that were there through it and got their opinions on how, maybe, I seemed at that time or how they felt, which then, again, allowed me to remember how bad it was.”

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