Claire’s story in memory of her husband Jay

In April 2025 my husband, Jay, started having stomach pains. These went on for two weeks, then on Friday 2 May they got worse and he decided to take himself to emergency. A friend had just had a close call with appendicitis and Jay wanted to make sure it wasn’t that.

He drove himself to Emergency, where thank God, the doctor on duty decided to do a CT scan. That night the doctor said to Jay, I think you have bowel cancer. The next day he was transferred to Hospital.

With no family history or other symptoms, this came as a complete and utter shock. With two little boys, 5 and 7, this was just beyond devastating to us.

Over the next week he had scans and tests, and we met with his new medical oncology team. We were informed it was Stage 4 and had spread to his liver, chest, lymph nodes and his neck. We also got the news that he had the BRAF mutation. It was extremely aggressive. He was given 12 months to 3 years. It was just blow after blow.

We are from a small rural community and the support from the community was incredible.
Jay remained positive. He was determined to have longer, for the kids. He called this diagnosis ‘just a detour,’ it wasn’t his journey, as a journey has an end.

He started chemo and it seemed to steady the cancer. But unfortunately, in the September the cancer had already outsmarted the chemo and it had spread. This time to the bone in his neck and pelvis. Another blow.

He started the second line of defence which was a targeted therapy and the results were in our favour. Everything had stabilised. Even started shrinking. His cancer count was down to 2 in January 2026. Finally, some good news. It was unbelievable. We bought a 2026 wall calendar and named it Jay’s Social Calendar. The treatment side effects were minimal, he was tired, but he was determined to do so much with the kids.

At the end of February he started getting pains in his right shoulder area and temperatures. A trip to hospital determined that he was fighting an infection. They started him on antibiotics and later that week he claimed he felt the best he had felt in ages.

However, the next weekend he got temperatures back and, on the Sunday, we went straight to the emergency department where they did more tests and scans. This is when we learnt the cancer had once again outsmarted the treatment and it was no longer working.

We met with Jay’s oncologist on the Thursday, where we were told that it had spread very rapidly and aggressively. Like nothing she had seen before. There was one more line of defence and he would start the next week. But given how quick he had progressed through the first two lines of defence, she didn’t hold much hope. She would also start contacting other hospitals about possible trials that might be suitable.

We were told that he probably had less than a year to live, but realistically, probably only a few short months. This crushed us. How could this be. Everything was going so well at the end of January.

Jay stated the new treatment on the Tuesday. Devastatingly, Jay suffered a stroke sometime that night / the early hours of Wednesday morning and was rushed to hospital.

He stabilised for a few days but then rapidly declined, passing away a week later, on the 11^th of March 2026, surrounded by his family.

We felt so robbed that his time was cut short, only to be cut even shorter again by the stroke.

Once again, the community, our friends and family have been incredible and I’m so grateful to live in our small town.

Jay loved life – in the 10 short months since his diagnosis we crammed as much as we could in between treatments. Jay loved an adventure, camping, fishing, music, cars, a practical joke, sleep but most of all he loved spending time with friends and family. Especially his two little boys.

I hope Jay’s story is the reason even just a few additional tests are completed every year! If we can help even just 1 person catch this horrible disease earlier, then sharing his story has done its job.

For anyone out there fighting cancer, I send you so much love and strength.

My one piece of advice:

Knowing what I know now, I have two pieces of advice:
– go with your gut, if something isn’t right, then push for answers.
– time is precious, don’t take any time for granted. Use every minute of every day. And hug family and friends every day.