Katie Keys is a patient at the Peter Copulos Cancer and Wellness Centre, but more importantly, she is an adventure lover, mother, teacher, friend and more.
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Here is her story so far.
In late August, her partner, Wayne Arazny, found a lump in her breast, but Katie, admittedly being stubborn, didn’t accept it.
After finding it herself, she scheduled a GP appointment.
“Obviously, I couldn’t get into the GP for a little while, so it was probably a week and a half after that, we went to the GP,” Katie said.
“My GP said ‘don’t worry, it’ll just be a cyst, we’ll send you for a mammogram, but don’t stress’.”
So, life went on.
She didn’t mention it to anyone because it was just a cyst, right?
She taught her class at St Mary of the Angels, Nathalia and drove to get her mammogram.
She said that while talking to the woman examining her, she asked if she could see anything, to which the nurse said they don’t tend to see much.
Katie’s left breast was examined, and they kept chatting away, but when it came to her right breast, the nurse stopped talking altogether.
“The whole mood of the room changed,” Katie said.
Tests didn’t stop there, with Katie having to get an ultrasound.
“He started on the right side, and I could see black lumps or masses,” she said.
“I kind of know what an ultrasound looks like, and I went, ‘oh, that doesn’t look great’, but obviously, no-one said anything.”
Katie went to school the next day as usual, but after getting a coffee with a friend, her GP rang.
“My GP said, ‘not to alarm you, but your results have been marked as urgent. How soon can you be in Shepparton?’” she said.
“Then me being me went, ‘oh, I just have one lesson to teach, and then I’ll come down’, but by the time I walked back to school, I went, ‘wait, that’s kind of serious’.
“So we muster up some people and drove to Shepp, and the GP went, ‘it doesn’t look good, they found five lumps total, two very large lumps, and a third smaller one that they’re concerned about’.”
During the appointment, Katie said she was a “mess” and had her friend come into the room to listen for her.
She was referred to a breast surgeon, who said she had the early stages of breast cancer, and they were “very aggressive”.
And again, the tests didn’t stop. Biopsies, MRIs and more were all in Katie’s future.
However, as has been reported, the state of the health service in regional areas is dire, with long wait times and a lack of specialists.
“We couldn’t get in for an MRI for months, couldn’t get in for biopsies until like February, and I was like, ‘you’ve just said ‘you’ve got cancer’, but we can’t do anything’,” she said.
“I had a day off work because I was a basket case, rang Steph (Sparrow) and said, ‘what a mess, can we do something?’”
After ringing every place they could think of, Katie got an appointment in Box Hill and, through a “friend of a friend of a friend”, got an MRI in Shepparton.
She then went back to her breast surgeon, who said it was triple negative breast cancer, and she had two lumps very close together, both quite large at 5cm and 7cm.
Through luck and the kindness of the surgeon, Katie was able to see an oncologist as a private patient about a month after Wayne discovered her lump.
“The oncologist was very quick, he was like, ‘we need to move on it straight away. No, you can’t do your hike. You can’t go away for the holidays. No, you can’t do anything,’” Katie said.
The plan was laid out clearly: three months of chemotherapy, three months of chemo and immunotherapy simultaneously, and then surgery.
“After all of the rounds, most of the cancer was killed,” she said.
It wasn’t smooth sailing when Katie started treatment, having an anaphylactic reaction to the chemo.
“So that was pretty scary and then had a couple of weeks off, come back and try again and have another anaphylactic reaction,” she said.
“So the decision was made to stop the initial chemo and move to the second stage.
“We’re no longer looking at lumpectomy, we're looking at a mastectomy and reconstruction.”
Due to the fact she had cancer in only one breast, her medical team wanted a single mastectomy and reconstruction.
“I’m fighting to take both because I have four kids; I don’t want to come back in three years, five years, eight years and go through the same stuff again,” she said.
After being directed to see a surgeon in Melbourne, her surgery has been booked for March 2025.
She has been able to do all treatments and visits to specialists, excluding the biopsy, within a 30-minute drive from her home.
“So, finish chemo and then within two weeks do surgery, and I am 100 per cent thankful that I can do it (treatment) in Shepparton,” she said.
“I am forever thankful for the facility here, forever thankful — the nurses are phenomenal.
“I cannot speak highly enough of the nurses, the doctors.”
She highlighted the fact she had a three-hour information session about cancer treatment and said she had felt supported by the centre and staff the whole way through her treatment.
Since getting diagnosed with cancer, Katie Keys hasn’t stopped.
“I’ve worked the whole way through,” she said.
“A lot of people early on said that I wouldn’t be able to teach.
“My plan the whole way through was if I have to or can manage to get up and get my little people dressed for school and get them to school, then I’ll teach.
“Of course, I have had about two days off in the whole time, and I sat at home feeling shit and sorry for myself and went, ‘I’m not going to do that again’.”
The school, St Mary of the Angels, Nathalia, has also made accommodations for Katie to attend appointments and treatment.
“I’ve had the full support of the school community and spoke to my principal early on where I was like, ‘I will be teaching kids’,” she said.
When she started teaching, she was able to choose where she sat, and it happened to be next to her future ‘work-wife’ and partner in crime, Steph Sparrow.
Steph Sparrow is not only a teacher at SMOTA but also a co-director of Goulburn Valley Pet Adoption and Rehoming, so it was only natural that their friendship was solidified through cats.
“She sent out an email, and said ‘I’ve got some cats I need to get rid of’,” Katie said.
“And my mum and dad had a massive mice plague, and Steph said she had three cats that don’t really want to be pet pets, but they’d be great around the house on a farm.”
Katie took all three kittens to their new home.
They often joke about how Katie’s real children and Steph’s fur-children are simpatico.
“We worked out that when my children were playing up, her ‘children’ were playing up, so each one of my kids matches up with one of her dogs,” Katie said.
The pair would do more than just sit together, with both facing a shaver to their hair the next school term.
“I was really mindful that I was going to lose my hair and that there’d be days that I might be grumpy, and I wanted to tell the kids,” Katie said.
When school was back for Term 4, Katie sat down with her principal and vice principal, and she brought up that October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
“I asked if we could do some kind of fundraiser or awareness raising,” she said.
“I wanted to shave my head. My boys went to SMOTA, and Xavier wanted to shave my head.
“We talked about maybe having something at school, but essentially a head-shaving event.”
It came to fruition when three teachers — Katie Keys, Steph Sparrow and Calypso Archibald — shaved their heads.
Elijah and Xavier, Katie’s two sons who attend the school, took turns shaving their mum’s hair.
However, Steph wasn’t done raising awareness and supporting Katie, and a conversation with a co-worker led to a full-blown concert.
“I was conscious of the fact that finances would be tight for a single parent anyway, so we needed to do something,” Steph said.
The GRAIN Store in Nathalia offered a venue for the Concert for Katie, with all proceeds going directly into Katie’s pocket to help her support her four boys while she was getting treatment.
Ten acts took to the stage on Sunday, December 1, and the audience of over 100 enjoyed a bar, slushies, fairy floss, face painting, raffles and great vibes.
“I had the goal in my head of raising $3000 for Katie,” Steph said.
“I was a little bit stressed about 10 days beforehand because we were well and truly a long way off our financial targets.
“Then all of a sudden, donations started coming in, and tickets started being bought and everything.
“By the time it was all done and dusted, we think we raised about $6000.
“That will mean that Katie’s got some money to help her through this cancer journey.”
Katie said she was shocked by the amount of support given to her by her close connections and the wider community.
“I’ve been astounded by the support of people who are not family, work colleagues or friends or mums of kids that my kids hang out with,” she said.
“I’ve just really been amazed by the support of people around me, from dropping off groceries to cooking meals.”
Donation details
To support Katie Keys as she continues to work and support her children, feel free to send a donation to the following bank account.
All donations will go directly to Katie.
Name: S Sparrow
BSB: 063540
Account number: 10165069
Cadet Journalist