Claire Groot didn’t think her cancer battle could get any worse.
That was until her husband Aaron was diagnosed with late-stage melanoma and thrown head-first into treatment while she was still undergoing her own.
The devastating double diagnosis leaves the parents clinging to hope that they will beat the insidious disease so they can watch their daughters, Evelyn, 7 and Natalie, 5, grow up.
The family’s horrific cancer journey began in 2019, shortly after their second daughter was born.
Claire, now 40, was breastfeeding when she felt a lump and being super-health conscious she went straight to the doctors where her worst fears were confirmed.
Claire Groot has been fighting cancer for five years – now her husband Aaron is facing the disease
Aaron was always the support person for Claire – both when the cancer was diagnosed and each time it came back
‘Natalie was getting fussy on that side, so I switched her over, which means that side went really flat,’ she explained.
‘That made it super easy to feel, it was a small hard lump, at first I thought it could be mastitis but Aaron, now 41, and I agreed I should have it checked in case.’
By the end of that week the doctor had called to say Claire had triple-positive breast cancer.
‘I was floored because I had always done the right thing. Eaten properly, exercised, breast fed, avoided underwire bras all the things you are meant to do,’ she said.
The mum discovered a lump in her breast when her second daughter was feeding – as she had rejected the affected breast
Now the couple are each tasked with beating the disease so they can be there for their daughters Evelyn, 7, and Natalie, 5
The devastating diagnosis would be delivered twice more, the first time 12 months after treatment for the first. The second, ten months after treatment for the second.
‘Right now I am on drugs to keep it at bay. Technically they can’t get rid of it – but there’s only so much these drugs can do and they could stop working. Then we just try the next one and the next one until we have no options,’ she said.
The mum has come to terms with her endless medical appointments and treatment fatigue and worked out how to manage her household and look after the kids while working around her treatment.
But nothing could prepare the young family for what would come in July, 2023.
Aaron’s diagnosis.
Claire refuses to see defeat as an option and wants to go overseas to achieve a cancer free status – something doctors have ruled out being able to do in Australia
The doting dad had been the key support person in his wife’s cancer battle, picking up the slack at home and with their children.
Claire couldn’t believe it – in one cruel twist of fate her support person was snatched away and their roles reversed. She now had to help him through his gruelling treatment, while continuing her own.
‘The tables have turned I feel like I have had my support taken away and that I have been put into the carer role,’ she said, admitting she has low moments.
‘For a few moments I was annoyed or angry. I thought I am not ready to be a carer – I am still sick.’
Aaron, pictured, has had a few surgeries trying to get rid of the melanoma which started as a suspect looking mole on his face
Aaron’s diagnosis came months after he first went to a skin clinic to question a growth on his face.
They kept sending him home.
His mum, who has had melanoma, kept telling him she didn’t like it – but as he had been to the clinic again and again he didn’t know what else to do about it.
In the end the dad decided to get it cut off, a mere ‘vanity’ procedure, because it kept getting caught when he was shaving.
The young dad was told the mole was benign – he didn’t trust that opinion and went back to his clinic three times to be sent home
‘They kept telling him it was a benign mole and nothing to worry about. He had been so proactive – even when we moved from Victoria to Queensland – getting his mole map sent over to the clinic,’ Claire said.
Days later the family got the news.
Further investigations revealed the cancer had already spread – making his prognosis much worse and treatment a lot more brutal.
‘I think people need to trust their gut – because if they had cut it off six or eight months earlier when he asked then it probably would have been the end of it,’ she said.
Instead eight months later and the dad is recovering at Chris Obrien Lifehouse in Sydney.
‘He had pretty invasive surgery, I walked in to see him and it was very confronting,’ Claire said.
Aaron, who once prided himself on his fitness, lay in the hospital bed with muscle missing from the top of his leg.
Claire, pictured here mid treatment – wants people to trust themselves and get opinions from different doctors if they don’t like the one they have been given
The flesh had been used to patch up his face and throat after doctors cut away as much cancer as they could find.
The surgery followed rounds of invasive treatments aimed at killing the stage 3b disease.
‘Aaron is going to need a lot of care,’ she said.
The parents have allowed family to share their story on Go Fund Me and across social media – as neither has the capacity to completely support their family financially.
More than $88,000 had been raised at the time of writing – giving Claire hope for a miracle.
The mum added that she hopes to go overseas to try to get rid of her cancer for good.
‘I can’t not beat this, I can’t even think about what would happen if I didn’t – it simply isn’t an option,’ she said.
‘I am still looking after myself and see my treatment as my top priority.’
Claire is sharing her story in the hopes other people ‘get a second or third opinion’.
‘Don’t just go back to the same doctor, trust your gut,’ she said.
Claire is fortunate to be ‘symptom free’ at this stage of her cancer journey but as the cancer has made its way to her spine she realises this could change at anytime.
The couple’s children haven’t been hugely aware of their mother’s treatments – they just know she goes to the doctors sometimes, and consider the port in her chest ‘normal’.
But they have noticed their typically active dad slowing down and started to ask questions, breaking Claire’s heart.
The couple were high school sweethearts and Claire says their love has stayed strong for over 20 years, helping them face their cancer head on.
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