‘Delta is my GUARDIAN ANGEL’
DIAGNOSED WITH A RARE CANCER, SHELLEY TURNED TO HER GOOD FRIEND
Shelley Bishop had just had a painful lump removed from her neck and the grave faces of her doctors told her the news was not good.
“They said it was Hodgkin lymphoma,” Shelley tells New Idea from Brisbane. “Before they explained much about it one doctor told me it was the cancer Delta Goodrem had. He was very surprised when I said I was a good friend of Delta’s and knew all about her cancer.”
Shelley and Delta met in 2017 when the singersongwriter was laying down tracks at the recording studio Shelley managed.
“She’s such a lovely human being, so easy to like,” shares Shelley, 30. “We developed this friendship very naturally and I’d seen her two weeks before my diagnosis at one of her concerts. She was one of the first people outside my family I told, and she became this amazing support.”
The now 37-year-old Delta raised awareness of the rare blood cancer when she was struck down with it in 2003, aged 18. Having already been through it, she was the perfect person for Shelley to turn to.
“Nobody in my family had any experience of cancer so I was scared,” Shelley explains. “Delta has this calming energy that I needed, and she humanised the whole thing. She spoke to me about what she’d been through and the treatment and honestly was in disbelief that we’d both ended up with this very rare cancer.”
Shelley needed two months of chemotherapy, plus 10 sessions of radiation, but her outlook was good.
“The treatment was very full on, but I’d message Delta to say I had one of her songs, ‘Keep Climbing’, blasting to give me motivation to keep going,” says Shelley, who was thrilled to be given the all clear in May 2022.
But, like her famous friend, Shelley isn’t intending to just move on.
“I’ve worked in the entertainment industry for a long time and I’d love to use my network to put on a benefit concert,” she says. ‘Blood cancer is not in the spotlight, and I’d like to do anything I can to raise awareness and to tell people going through it that there is light at the end of the tunnel.”