Young mum given three years to live after beautiful gesture
Megy Gough received the shock of her life when she was told she’d have just three years left to live.
Following a wonderful gesture where she rallied 30 vendors to gift a $50,000 wedding to a couple who survived bowel cancer, she found out in November 2019 that she had the same horrible disease.
The disease had already spread to her liver and lymph nodes, and doctors declared her cancer “inoperable”.
However the mother-of-one is determined to watch her four-year-old daughter, Harper, grow up.
“My heart breaks at the thought of not being able to watch her grow up to be the woman that we're raising her to be. But, for her I know I have to fight this disease,” Mrs Gough told the Gold Coast Bulletin.
The 31-year-old skin with her husband are fighting hard, despite losing their jobs at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The pair are trying to fund integrative oncology, which is not covered by Medicare and will cost her more than $50,000.
While it won’t cure her disease, doctors say, it will buy her time.
It was only four years ago that Mrs Gough gave back to the community by helping a cancer-stricken couple.
She roused dozens of vendors to donate their services for a $50,000 wedding as a present for Rebecca Limb and Matt McLean.
“After the wedding I was providing her with assistance around growth shampoos, to help with her hair regrowth after her chemotherapy. Now the tables have turned. I could never have imagined that I would be walking down the same tough road though just a couple of years later,” she said.
Mrs Gough said she missed key signs that her health was deteriorating, and put her symptoms down to exhaustion as she had started her own company within the same year.
She admitted her health had become a “last priority”.
After delaying a doctor’s visit for six months, she says it is a decision that became the “biggest regret of her life”.
Mrs Gough underwent 17 major rounds of chemotherapy after she could not find any doctors in Queensland willing to give her surgery.
She eventually found a Sydney doctor to take on her case.
They gave her a peritonectomy in August to remove half of her bowel and 75 per cent of her liver, gallbladder, appendix and stomach lining.
Sadly, the family received another devastating blow when it was discovered there were two nodules in a scan that had become active.
Doctors also found cysts on her ovaries tha were determined to possibly be cancer.
She went on to undergo surgery to remove spots on her lungs, but ended up in an induced coma for five days, with liver failure and a collapsed lung.
The harsh reality has not deterred Mrs Gough’s hope, as she remains determined to have more time with her family.
The family has set up a GoFundMe page to help the couple through their hardship.
“I’ve always struggled and hated asking for help. I would prefer to help,” she said.
“But I realised you either ask for help or you could potentially never see your daughter grow up.”