A young Sydney mum diagnosed with terminal cancer has penned a keepsake diary for her four-year-old daughter.
Scroll down for video
Marisa Calo, 30, was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2013 at 27 years of age, and her daughter Avia was 18 months.
Marisa and her husband Steve, 42, learned the next week that they were having another child, but tragically had to terminate the pregnancy so she could begin her course of chemotherapy.
She then had a single mastectomy, six rounds of chemo, five weeks of daily radiation and had to take Herceptin, a breast cancer drug, for a year.
But after one year of treatment, Marisa learned she had stage four advanced breast cancer, with the disease spreading to her lungs.
Telling Daily Mail, she said: “Since then I have gone through three different types of chemo, each of which worked for about six months and late last year I had surgery to physically remove the cancer from my lung.”
“At the moment, my cancer is incurable but treatable. I get scans every three months.”
“I’m just lucky that I’m healthier and doing well. Chemo makes me unwell or tired and my daughter understands that and we’ve been able to deal with it.”
Marisa has created a memento for her daughter to keep called Letters For Avia – a scrapbook full of letters and stories that document her cancer journey and fond family memories.
“These are all the things I might not be around to share with her so I wanted to make sure that all of the things I want her to know about me and my life, my childhood, what I was like as a teen, views on things and experiences. I just want her to know all of that stuff,” she said.
“If she is at some kind of milestone in her life and I’m not around, I hope it’s a comfort for her to look at the book and feel happy knowing that I took the time out to make this for her.”
“My biggest regret is her living her life and feeling cheated that I’m not around anymore or when something happens. So I want her to remember just how much I loved her.”
Marisa says she hopes Avia will take it with her wherever she goes in her life.
“It’s comforting to know that if or when something does happen to me there’s a book there for my daughter. It’s not just about my cancer and treatment, it’s about our whole lives together,” she said.
Marisa has been using It’s About Us, an online website to create the book. She still has some more pages to write, including the pregnancy she tragically had to terminate.
“That is the one entry I have written in my mind plenty of times but I have struggled to write it properly so far,” she said.
“Avia has been talking more and more lately about not having a brother or sister so I think I am ready to write about it for her to read when she is older.”
See Marisa talk about the scrapbook below
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
.png?resize=380%2C285)
