meet Renee

An angel. A horse. A Christmas present. A bunny rabbit. These might sound like a random selection of Halloween costumes, but they’re the outfits HESTA member Renee decided to wear to her chemotherapy sessions.
 

She wanted to distract herself and her fellow patients from the inevitable fear and discomfort of cancer treatment.

“As you can imagine, chemo is not fun,” Renee says.

“I had fatigue and nausea and meltdowns and ‘why me?’ moments.

“But because I’m slightly unhinged in the best way possible, I dressed up in costume every single time. And it got crazier and weirder.”

Renee has been cancer-free since 2019 after having her ovaries removed and a double mastectomy.

For the past seven years, she has participated in the Mother’s Day Classic, a national walk/run supported by HESTA that raises money for the National Breast Cancer Foundation and the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation.

Renee participates in the Mother's Day Classic every year.

All Renee could manage in her first year was a lap of her hospital ward, wearing a pink feather boa and holding onto her IV pole.

She hasn’t missed an event since and says she’ll participate every year until the day she dies.

“I really like being an ambassador and showing people that cancer isn’t necessarily a death sentence, that you can even face it with humour,” Renee says.

“I was 38 when I was diagnosed and I never had any symptoms, so it’s important to me to spread the word."

As a disability support worker, Renee is giving back in her professional life too, helping adults with different abilities at a working farm and café in Melbourne’s south-east.

She loves her job and is deeply fulfilled by the growth and development of her clients.

But working in an underpaid industry for her whole career means Renee has always been worried about whether she’ll have enough super to retire comfortably.

Over the past three or four years, she’s been taking back control.

“I’m really conscious that retirement is only 20 years away, so I’ve started making extra contributions through salary sacrifice,” Renee says.

“This has made a big difference to my super balance.”

Renee is now looking forward to a retirement of financial security, which means having a roof over her head and enough money to pay her bills, with a bit left over to see more of the world. Not to mention funding all her future Mother’s Day Classic costumes, of course!

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