Kellie Finlayson has revealed how she celebrated the Melbourne Cup as she battles stage four lung and bowel cancer.
The AFL WAG, 29, posted a video to Instagram on Tuesday, sharing the ‘reality’ of her day as she visited a hospital for treatment.
Kellie smiled and laughed in her bedroom as she danced to Taylor Swift’s hit The Fate of Ophelia and put on a long blue dress.
She then continued dancing after she arrived to the hospital and had a chemotherapy port connected to her chest.
‘Hahaha my Melb Cup Tuesday reality is so vastly different to what you’d expect or [for] a 20 something year old…. Wild,’ she captioned the post.
Many of her followers flocked to the comments to praise her bravery.
Kellie Finlayson has revealed how she spent Melbourne Cup as she battles stage four lung and bowel cancer
‘How do you bring such positive vibes to chemo?’ one person asked while another said: ‘Such an inspiration with the most beautiful smile.’
‘Amazing it cannot be easy but you’re giving it everything,’ a third commented.
‘Never the victim…always the warrior! What a role model you are for your beautiful girl,’ another added.
It comes after Kellie recently revealed the emotional challenges of dealing with her diagnosis.
The WAG, who is married to Port Adelaide star Jeremy Finlayson, is battling stage four bowel and lung cancer and has undergone thoracic surgery in recent months.
She was first diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2021 and revealed in 2022 that the illness had spread to her lungs.
Appearing on the Jess Rowe Big Talk Show podcast’s Safe Space series earlier this year, Kellie, who was promoting her new memoir There Must Be More, said she was ‘thriving’ in the wake of her diagnosis.
When Jess asked Kellie what she meant by ‘thriving’, she said it was all about changing her frame of mind.
Kellie laughed in her bedroom as she danced to Taylor Swift ‘s hit The Fate of Ophelia and put on a long blue dress
She then continued dancing after she arrived to the hospital and had a chemotherapy port connected to her chest
‘It completely comes from mindset,’ she said.
‘I feel like I still live each day the same as I used to, if not with more life, if that makes sense,’ she said.
‘I turned a really s***ty situation into a pretty incredible one and a really powerful one with a lot of purpose.’
Kellie added that one of the challenges of battling cancer could be how the diagnosis robs the sufferer of agency.
‘We don’t get many choices when we’re diagnosed. We get: Start this treatment or die, essentially. They’re your options – get really sick from this treatment, or don’t be here anymore,’ she said.
Kellie added that one choice still in front of her was how she chose to fight the disease emotionally.
‘The only choice I guess I did have was how I responded to that and how I almost copped it on the chin – like an insult,’ she said.
‘I got on with life and did the things I could do to make each day okay, initially, and now great.’
Kellie, who is married to Port Adelaide star Jeremy Finlayson, is battling stage four bowel and lung cancer and has undergone thoracic surgery in recent months
In March, Kellie revealed she had undergone a VATS procedure to remove a piece of tissue from her lungs. VATS stands for Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery, which is a form of keyhole surgery.
She revealed that doctors had removed metastatic tissue from her lungs – Metastatic tissue occurs when cancer cells spread from a primary tumour to other areas in the body to form new tumours.
Kellie and Jeremy tied the knot in March 2023, in an intimate ceremony at South Australia’s Tennyson Beach.
They share daughter Sophia, who was born in 2021, just months before Kellie was first diagnosed.
