What Leeanne thought was normal new-parent exhaustion turned out to be incurable bowel cancer (Picture: Leeanne Grassnick/SWNS) Leeanne Grassnick thought she was dealing with the sort of exhaustion that comes with becoming a new parent. She’d given birth to her son in December 2021 before catching Covid-19 just three days later. The tiredness that followed made her feel miserable but she wasn’t overly alarmed. The 42 year-old from South West London had also begun losing weight pretty rapidly and was picking up constant infections. Still, she assumed it was all connected to recovering from childbirth while trying to survive on barely any sleep, which is – of course – hardly unusual for a new mum. Plus the dose of Covid surely didn’t help. ‘As a new mother these are all things you have when you have just had a baby so it is very scary for a new mum because you don’t know if it is what you are supposed to be feeling or whether it was something more serious,’ Leeanne says. Wife Emma Davies helped push for faster scans after Leeanne’s symptoms became much more severe (Picture: Leeanne Grassnick/SWNS) Months later, during a family holiday to Corfu back in April 2022, things started to become impossible to brush aside. Leeanne started struggling to walk long distances and developed severe pain around the side of her ribcage that suddenly stopped feeling like something that could be explained away by tiredness. ‘It’s our happy place and we go there every year. But I just wasn’t able to enjoy it,’ she said. The pain became so intense that Leeanne ended up in A&E, where doctors discovered some irregularities in her liver tests. She was initially told to return several weeks later for an outpatient ultrasound, though her wife Emma Davies, 36, pushed for the scans to happen sooner. And it’s a good job she did. Since her diagnosis in 2022, Leeanne has undergone more than 60 rounds of chemotherapy (Picture: Leeanne Grassnick/SWNS) That urgency really did prove to be vital too. Strangely enough, Emma is a doctor who was actually carrying out a PhD in cancer research at the time. And Leeanne believes her wife’s medical knowledge helped speed up the process dramatically. ‘She is my lifesaver because without her I don’t think I would be here today,’ Leeanne said. Scans later revealed there to be a full 22 lesions on Leeanne’s liver. In May 2022, she was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to her liver, before further tests showed she had the BRAFV600E mutation, an aggressive and extremely fast-growing type of bowel cancer. Doctors discovered 22 lesions on Leeanne’s liver following a trip to A&E (Picture: Leeanne Grassnick/SWNS) The diagnosis came as a horrifying shock, particularly because Leeanne had previously been very healthy and active. Doctors later told her the cancer was incurable and gave her just a year to live. ‘I had a panic attack. I just couldn’t breathe. I felt like everything just kind of went into a daze around me. I just remember looking at my wife and she was just pale and completely speechless,’ she said. ‘It was horrendous.’ Leeanne began chemotherapy treatment at The Royal Marsden in London on May 21, 2022 and initially underwent six rounds. Since then she has undergone more than 60 rounds of chemotherapy while continuing to live with the disease. But, crucially, she’s still battling on. Overseas treatment options are now being explored as Leeanne continues living with cancer (Picture: Leeanne Grassnick/SWNS) Although surgery was considered a numbers of times, doctors were unable to remove the tumours because they had not quite shrunk enough during treatment. Leeanne is now exploring options overseas, including treatments in Germany and over in the United States, in the hope of fighting the cancer off for as long as possible and extending her life. One treatment she has looked into is something called ‘Histotripsy’, a non-invasive procedure that uses ultrasound waves to destroy tumour cells. While Cambridge University is exploring the treatment, it is currently far more accessible in the United States, where one round can cost between $30,000 and $50,000. Alongside the physical impact of the illness, Leeanne says that motherhood has become one of the most emotionally difficult parts of her diagnosis. Because of chemotherapy, she spent huge amounts of time in hospital while her son was cared for by a nanny. A JustGiving fundraiser has been launched to help cover the growing cost of treatment and care (Picture: Leeanne Grassnick/SWNS) ‘Because of my chemotherapy I wasn’t allowed to breastfeed anymore, getting him on to the bottle was so hard – and I couldn’t spend any time with him he had to spend it with the nanny – I was just so ill and constantly in hospital,’ she said. ‘It was a really big separation for me and him and that was really painful and traumatic.’ For much of her son’s first year of life, Leeanne says she was often far too unwell to even be able to lift him properly. She struggled with the feeling that cancer had robbed her of the version of motherhood she had imagined for herself. ‘I really struggled because I felt like I wasn’t able to be the mother that I wanted to be. I was in so much pain for most of the first year that I often couldn’t lift him,’ she said. ‘On one hand, I just wanted him close to me all the time because I wanted him to know how much I love him. But at the same time I worried that actually, is it better to die now so that he doesn’t have any emotional pain from it. As he’s gotten older, the more he’s actually become attached and understands the situation.’ Early motherhood became especially difficult while Leeanne spent long periods in hospital during treatment (Picture: Leeanne Grassnick/SWNS) Leeanne and Emma have since launched a JustGiving page to help cover the huge costs associated with treatment and living with cancer. The fundraiser has also drawn support from JustGiving itself, whose president praised Leeanne’s resilience. Pascale Harvie, President and General Manager of JustGiving, said: ‘It’s impossible to fully grasp the emotional and physical weight that this diagnosis has placed on Leeanne and her family.’ ‘Yet throughout it all, Leeanne’s determination and resilience have been nothing short of extraordinary. At every stage, she has continued to defy the odds time and time again.’