Mother’s brave fight not enough

HAYLEY Sparkes was just 34, happily married and expecting her second baby when she received a shock pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

Just a few months later she was dead.

“It was about five months from the initial hospital entry up to the point where they stopped treatment,” widower Alex Sparkes, 39, said.

“She put on a brave face for both myself and (daughter) Maisy and she was obviously going through her own battle with emotions.

“We could obviously tell that she was scared and she didn’t want to die and she was battling as hard as she could. And she spent as much time with Maisy as she could but yeah, it was super tough.”

Not long after her diagnosis, the couple decided to terminate her second pregnancy. The treatment required for the disease, which had already spread to her bones and soon emerged in her brain, meant she risked harming her unborn child.

Initially, radiation treatment and chemotherapy controlled the cancer and Hayley was able to walk again. Then she developed a severe swelling reaction to treatment, the cancer emerged in her gut, she started to lose her balance and one day could no longer speak because it had spread to her brain.

“It was basically the doctor’s opinion that she was now in a state where any further treatment was not going to do her any better,” Mr Sparkes said.

Mr Sparkes, from Cherrybrook in Sydney, said too often pancreatic cancer was discovered when it was too late for treatment.

His wife’s cancer was only discovered by chance, after she collapsed with back problems. She had dismissed general symptoms of tiredness as pregnancy-related.

“We need to safeguard the future for people like Maisy who now has pancreatic cancer history in her family, especially at a young age,” he said. “The earlier we get an answer for her and a possible screening process and even treatment, the better.”