Three months ago, Amy-Rose’s life looked exactly the way it “should” for a 23-year-old building a future.

She was finishing university, working full-time, newly engaged, healthy, active, and expecting her first baby with her partner, Jack. Their days were filled with everything
ordinary and wonderful: planning, dreaming, preparing for the next chapter.

Then a lump appeared in her neck.

Within weeks, everything shifted.

What had been dismissed as “normal pregnancy symptoms” — the exhaustion, nausea, back pain, breathlessness — turned out to be something far more serious. After pushing
through multiple appointments and advocating for herself with a determination fuelled by her unborn son, Amy-Rose was finally given the diagnosis: Hodgkin’s lymphoma,
discovered while she was still pregnant.

“Life doesn’t care if you’re a good person,” she said. “I did all the right things — worked hard, bought a house, got engaged — and then cancer just showed up anyway.”

It was a sentence that changed everything, not just for her, but for her entire family. And it was the beginning of their unexpected journey with palliative care.

Rethinking Palliative Care: “I thought it meant the end.”

Like most people, Amy-Rose and her family had only ever heard the words palliative care in the context of final days.

Her mother remembered it from a grandparent’s end-of-life experience. Amy-Rose admitted that until a few weeks earlier, she assumed it meant “making someone
comfortable because it’s over.”

This is the barrier Palliative Care ACT has been working to break for years.

Because for young families like Amy-Rose and Jack, palliative care didn’t mean giving up.

It meant finding support, stability, dignity, rest, and connection during the most confronting moments of their lives.

Finding Leo’s Place: “This is home away from home.”

When treatment began, the young couple found themselves navigating hospital admissions, biopsies, chemo schedules, and urgent trips between Wagga and Canberra. The emotional toll was enormous — but so was the physical one.

Her mother described nights sleeping upright in hospital chairs, trying to be present but running on empty.

“No one is to sleep in a chair again. Not unless it’s my last night,” Amy said — a line that carried both love and exhaustion.

That’s where Leo’s Place changed everything.

More than simply accommodation, Leo’s became the grounding force around which the whole family could rally.

“You can feel normal here,” Amy said. “I can have my family here. My friends can visit. It just feels… normal.”

At Leo’s, her partner and family could rest, shower, cook (if they want to), sleep in a real bed, breathe, and be close by — without the constant fluorescent lights and alarms of a
hospital ward. Her cousins could come visit. Her friends could sit with her over dinner.

She met other guests who were also navigating complex illness.

“It’s not clinical here. It’s not frightening. It’s people who are unwell, but okay — living, talking, laughing. It normalises it.”

That sense of normality — of life continuing, even in crisis — is at the heart of palliative care.

Strength, Perspective and the Unexpected Truths of Illness

Chemotherapy during pregnancy is frightening for anyone, let alone a first-time mum. Amy-Rose had braced herself for the worst: violent illness, isolation, fear.

Instead, she discovered something she didn’t expect.

“Some days I feel better now than I did before treatment,” she said with a quiet, surprising positivity.

Her family laughed remembering how they’d stocked up on vomit bags, sanitiser and masks — preparing for the “absolute worst.”

But what Amy-Rose learned is one of the most important messages she now shares with others in her support groups:

“You’re stronger than you think you are.”

Cancer changed her perspective too. The small frustrations, the trivial stresses, the things that once felt urgent — all of it shifted.

“So many things feel shallow now,” she said. “I used to miss out on things because I was worried about being tired for work the next day. Now I think… why? Why did I say no?”
She speaks with clarity, but not bitterness. Just perspective — the kind you only gain when life turns abruptly.

A Wedding at Leo’s Place: Love in the Middle of Everything

In the midst of treatment, hospital stays, and preparing for an early delivery, something beautiful happened.

Amy-Rose and Jack got married.

Quietly. Privately. At Leo’s Place.

With the support of the staff at Palliative Care ACT and the team at Leo’s, the house was transformed into a wedding venue — intimate, warm, tender, and filled with the kind of love that doesn’t wait for “the perfect time.”

The CEO of Palliative Care ACT said afterward:

“Days like today remind us exactly why we do this work. I couldn’t be prouder to stand alongside this team.”

It was a reminder that palliative care is not solely about endings.

It’s about enabling moments — big and small — that give life meaning.

A meal together.
A place to rest.
A wedding.
A family being held up by community.

“Palliative care isn’t what you think.”

Amy-Rose’s story is personal and deeply her own, but it carries messages many people
need to hear:

• You are never “too young” for illness.
• Palliative care supports people of all ages.
• It is about living as well as possible, for as long as possible.
• It’s about family support, not just medical care.
• It offers dignity, rest, connection and comfort.
• It doesn’t mean “the end.”
• It means you don’t have to carry everything alone.

Leo’s Place didn’t cure Amy’s cancer — that’s not its purpose.

But it held her family together. It gave them strength. It gave them normal life in a notnormal time.

And that is the heart of palliative care.

Not endings.

Living — through hard things, with help.