Taylah fought leukaemia – not once but twice

Taylah was nearing the end of year 9, she was into sport, boys, gossiping and shopping. Like most teenagers, she enjoyed being around her friends.

“I remember having to sit down at assembly because I couldn’t stand for that long, I remember my GP telling me that I was “depressed” and under too much pressure from school. I wasn’t myself, but I wasn’t experiencing super abnormal symptoms.”

At only 14 years-of-age, Taylah was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.

“One chemotherapy drug required a weeklong hospital stay, it’s so toxic that you can’t leave hospital because it needs to be flushed out of your body before it starts damaging your insides, it’s horrendous”.

At the completion of Taylah’s treatments, she took a year off study to travel. She was only a week away from her 5-year cancer free mark, when doctors biopsied a lump in Taylah’s breast – it was leukaemia.

“It was really difficult the second time because I knew what I was in for – it was really traumatic and distressing”.

Associate Professor Rachel Conyers is leading a type of testing called Pharmaco-genomics, which explores how genes influence a person’s response to drugs. In addition studying rare serious toxicities that cause unacceptable long term side effects and impact quality of life in survivors.

“Sadly, 60% of paediatric oncology patients experience side effects from medications during their cancer therapies.”

“Our hope is to reduce deaths from cancer therapies during treatment and long-term quality of life impacts from patients who suffer life-long health issues as a result of their treatment.”