By Jayne Munday | November 26, 2009

Faced with an aggressive cancer and enduring arduous bouts of chemotherapy while heavily pregnant with her second child, Brisbane woman Bernadette Vella made a wish no mother would have to face such a battle alone.

Speaking at QBR’s Women in Business final event for 2009 yesterday (November 25), single mother Vella recalled her history of highs and lows as she battled Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and the subsequent birth of her charity, Mummy’s Wish.

“Before Mummy’s Wish I started out life as an accountant, and got into IT consulting. I travelled the world, then realised I wanted to have a family and kids,” Vella says, addressing the charity Christmas lunch in Brisbane.

“I came back to Australia and started my family. I was happily living life as a normal mum, a working mum, with my little boy (Tiernan). Then I fell pregnant with my little girl Arielle,” she says.

Despite the normality of her ‘pre-cancer’ life, in 2006, Vella faced some very daunting news.

“I started feeling very sick, but put it down to morning sickness. I had been to the GP many times, but he just said ‘you are pregnant, get over it’.”

DIAGNOSIS

After getting the all clear from doctors on April 10, 2006, Vella recalls how she went downhill the very next day.

“I went to hospital because I couldn’t breathe and they decided to do a CT test on me; much against my wants at the time, because I was pregnant,” she says.

“They came back and said you have a tumour the size of a football in your chest, and they said it has probably been there a year. The reason you can’t swallow or can’t breathe is that this tumour is suffocating your oesophagus and trachea.”

At 14 weeks pregnant, Vella admits it was the last thing she wanted to hear, but says she persevered solely because of her unborn child.

“I don’t care if I die, I don’t care what happens, but I’m keeping my baby. And that was the only thing I could think about at the time,” she says.

Following a barrage of biopsies and test, Vella was eventually diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, and told she wouldn’t survive chemotherapy while pregnant.

“Basically if I wanted to survive I had to terminate my baby because they weren’t prepared to give me the chemotherapy I needed whilst pregnant,” she says.

Defiant in keeping her baby alive, Vella saw a glimmer of hope when her obstetrician admitted it was possible to undergo chemotherapy while pregnant.

“She believed that with the proper medical care I could get my body through it,” Vella explains.

“It was hard. I felt like dying half the time, but I knew I had to fight for Arielle. She was in there with me and we had to do it together,” she says.

THE FIGHT OF HER LIFE

Continuing treatment until she was 31 weeks pregnant, Arielle was soon born prematurely at 33 weeks.

Like her mum, she proved to have a fighting spirit and surprised doctors by her strength and resilience.

Despite complications from the caesar, six weeks later, Vella was well enough to continue her chemotherapy treatment through until December 2006.

Given the all clear, Vella celebrated her freedom with a holiday.

Knowing it was all too good to be true, she then got the call from her doctor.

“My doctor rang and said ‘in six weeks you’ve grown a massive tumour between your heart and your lung’. I knew it was a fight for my life,” Vella recalls.

Upon discovering the tumour had multiplied by 50 percent after yet another two debilitating weeks of chemotherapy, Vella admits she was devastated.

After all but exhausting medical protocol, she was put on a cocktail of drugs and treatments for breast cancer and lung cancer, and endured stem cell transplants.

“Somehow, against it all, I got through. It was a little miracle I suppose that I made it,” Vella says.

“It’s very difficult, but I don’t think I would have survived if I didn’t have my kids. I was living for them, solely for them,” she says.

Living as a single mum, Vella admits she relied on a strong support base of family and friends to help get her through.

“I had these two kids and I owed it to them to survive. They are the reason I don’t give up, even when things are really hard,” she says.

Seeing her son Tiernan start school this year has proved even more encouraging.

“If I can see Arielle get to school, that’s my next little mission at the moment. I stand a 30 percent 5-year survival rate, but I’m determined that I will survive, and it will be for my kids,” she says.

While her journey so far would have been enough to make anyone give in, Vella surprisingly admits she was one of the lucky ones.

THE BIRTH OF MUMMY’S WISH

With family and friends at her bedside 24/7, Vella soon realised many other mothers living with cancer did not have such crucial support.

As a result, the ever-determined Vella pledged upon survival of her treatments she would start a charity.

“I thought this whole situation is just wrong. Mums shouldn’t get cancer when they’ve got young kids. And the support networks are just not there. I was so mad about it that I wanted to do something,” she says.

Vella called her charity Mummy’s Wish because her wish is that there was no need for such a charity to exist.

Fellow mother Gayle Richardson became involved with the organisation after being diagnosed with the same cancer while 12 weeks pregnant.

With Vella and Richardson as the driving force behind operations, Mummy’s Wish got off the ground by providing ‘treat bags’ for mums in need and toys for hospitals.

It then grew to act as a go-between for mothers, by putting them in touch with the Cancer Council, palliative care and corporate volunteering programs.

Brisbane-based training agency Charlton Brown has this year joined the fight against cancer by signing a ‘Commitment to Cooperation’ with Mummy’s Wish to assist with babysitting and in-home care for struggling mums.

Vella’s charity also generously offers every mum a wish, whereby $500 is given towards a weekend away, or a special gift.

2010 AND BEYOND

While Mummy’s Wish currently focuses on mothers with cancer, Vella says she would like to extend this to fathers as well.

“Right now, we have just been focusing the last four months on getting the back-end of the charity going. Initially, Gayle and I were doing all the fundraising by ourselves. We were doing the support for the mums by ourselves, all the admin, everything,” she says.

After realising they could not handle things on their own, Mummy’s Wish began the process of recruiting a board, and rounding-up volunteers.

“We started working on formulating a plan and treating the charity as a business,” Vella explains.

After ensuring she had the right skill-set on board, Vella says she can now see a clearer future for her brain-child.

“There are a lot of exciting things ahead. Come 2010 we can really push getting into the hospitals and getting our name around a bit more,” she says.

“We hope that Mummy’s Wish will be able to be national. Our long term goal is that we can support parents with cancer or any other long term illness and support those parents around Australia.”

Yesterday’s inspiring luncheon at Brisbane’s Sofitel Hotel marked the last of the Women in Business events for 2009.

For further information on the 2010 Women in Business events calendar, contact Events Manager Kirsty Kahler at kkahler@acpmagazines.com.au.