Consumer Advisory Panel

I was diagnosed with a Grade 3 Oligodendroglioma in 2013. I under went concurrent radiation and chemotherapy treatment for approximately 5 weeks, followed by 6 cycles (5 days on, 23 days off) of chemotherapy treatment. After 11 years I’m happy to report the tumour is stable. I joined COGNO cap around 8 years ago as a Consumer Advisor, reviewing upcoming proposed or new clinical trials ensure patients are receive the best treatment possible.
Aside from my voluntary role at COGNO, I also work in Buying at Kmart Australia in Confectionery. Outside of work, my interests include walking, working out at the gym, and travelling regional, interstate or overseas.

My interest in being a COGNO CAP member stems from both my professional background and my family involvement with brain cancer. I trained in Canada as a psychometrist, and worked in Toronto administering neuropsychological assessments to the clients of a neuropsychologist in private practice, and to in-patients at St Michael’s Hospital. Other roles included implementing rehabilitation programs for adults with traumatic brain injuries, and most recently, as the Accessibility Adviser at James Cook University, Cairns for 15 years, supporting students with a range of disability, injury, illness or health conditions. I am now mostly retired, but do casual editing work for a research centre at Central Queensland University investigating Indigenous health equity and wellbeing.

I have personal lived experience with cancer, both first-person and through my 20-year-old daughter’s diagnosis and treatment for brain cancer (medulloblastoma). She was diagnosed in 2015 and died 18 months later. She had been treated with a paediatric protocol because there were no protocols specifically for young adults with this type of cancer. This gap in the research has fuelled my interest in contributing in whatever way I can to the advancement of brain cancer research in general, and in particular, to treatments targeting the adolescent and young adult population.