Support Emma’s cancer fight
A 29-year-old mother from Darnum has begun chemotherapy after becoming the seventh member of her family to be diagnosed with cancer.
Emma Trenarry, who had been identified as carrying a rare, hereditary disorder that predisposes developing cancer, is being supported by family and community as she prepares to battle the cancer found in her spine, hip and pelvis.
“She’s just a wonderful person and everyone knows that,” her mum Diana Matthew said. “She’s kind and always on the look out for everybody else.”
“She was more concerned about how everybody else was feeling, making sure everybody else was okay. She’s an unbelievable woman.”
Married to Warren, Emma is mum to three young children, 11-year-old Charli, seven-yearold Tahlia and five-year-old Lachy.
Diana said Emma was only 14-years-old when her dad died from cancer at just 40-years-old.
Altogether, seven members of the family have battled cancer, with four having died.
Her paternal family carry the gene for Li-Fraumeni syndrome, but amazingly none of Emma’s three children have inherited the gene.
Diana said it wasn’t just one type of cancer that hits, and it tended to occur in childhood or to young adults. After her grandmother died at 39 from breast cancer, aunt from breast cancer and great uncle from leukaemia at 16, Emma found out she carried the gene about three years ago and has taken many precautions.
“It’s just insidious, it really is,” Diana said.
Emma bravely underwent a hysterectomy proactively in 2020. As a result, they found a previously undiagnosed cancer in her cervix.
Not being able to expose herself to x-rays, Emma had to give up her dream of becoming a veterinarian nurse.
She regrouped and had just started nursing studies when, in August, Emma was diagnosed with a sarcoma in her pelvis detected during her annual scan at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. She is now undergoing 15 weeks of intensive chemotherapy before major surgery to remove the tumours.
It is expected Emma will lose a vertebrae in her spine and require a dramatic reconstruction of her hip and pelvis.
To help with the costs of her treatment, transport and family accommodation as well as home modifications to allow for a wheelchair access, a GoFundMe page has been launched with an aim of raising $50,000.
It has already raised almost $9000.
If you would like to donate to the Darnum family, visit gofundme.com/f/emma-vsthe-big-c