Six years after moving the country with her TV WEEK Logies speech calling for greater brain cancer awareness and research, Carrie Bickmore has achieved a hugely monumental milestone.
The TV and radio star announced via Instagram the launch of The Brain Cancer Centre founded by Carrie’s Beanies for Brain Cancer.
Speaking to her followers whilst wearing the same blue beanie she donned during the 2015 awards, Carrie explained what it means to her and what the institution wants to achieve.
Carrie began her message with the incredible news, thanking her stakeholders for helping make her dream a reality.
“Hi all Carrie here,” she began. “I just wanted to share some really exciting news with you today.”
“Six years after donning this beanie at the Logies, I am so proud to announce that we have established the Brain Cancer Centre, founded by Carrie’s Beanies for Brain Cancer, in partnership with the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. This is a collaborative initiative with some of the best and brightest minds in this country.”
For the remainder of the video, Carrie explained her goal to end brain cancer as a terminal illness and give people hope by providing lifesaving treatments.
“With one sole focus, to end brain cancer as a terminal illness. Survival rates haven’t changed in 30 years, and that is just not good enough.
“I want to see a world where every single Australian who is sitting in front of their oncologist or their surgeon and they’ve just been given a brain cancer diagnosis, is told ‘but there is real hope, there is really effective treatments, and your future looks bright.'”
Carrie making her famous speech at the TV WEEK Logie Awards.
(Nine/TV WEEK)“I want to see a world where no one has to lose their life or lose the life of someone they love to brain cancer. So, this has been a huge journey,” she finished.
On The Project, Carrie shared harrowing details about the disease, and she explained that 3000 people have passed away from brain cancer in the past two years, which she described as “just unacceptable.”
The 40-year-old lost her husband Greg Lange to brain cancer in December 2010.
Greg received his diagnosis in his early 20s, and during Anh’s Brush With Fame, she talked about that time in their lives.
Carrie’s late husband Greg with their son Ollie.
(Instagram)“They diagnosed him about a year after we moved to Melbourne. I was still 21 or 22 and he was about 25. He had a seizure at home and then one thing led to another,” Carrie explained.
“They diagnosed him with a brain tumour. In your 20s that’s the last thing you can… I didn’t know anyone that had cancer, I didn’t know anything about brain cancer, neither did he. It just completely threw everything we knew, everything we had planned, it threw everything on its head. It was the start of an incredibly hard journey.”
“We got married when I was 25. I look back at our wedding now and it was a real mix of love and a celebration of life. It was a great day.”
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