Mornington VIEW Club

Guest speaker for August wasTeisha Ward, a young beautiful and vibrant 26-year-old woman, who came to speak to our members about her battle with stage 4 melanoma. This talk was even more poignant as Teisha is a granddaughter of our own Lois C. Members were asked to dress or accessorise with something yellow for the day.

Teisha had only just turned 20 and living a full and active life similar to many people of her age including working, partying and having just recently started a relationship with a young man whom she really liked, when she was diagnosed with melanoma.  It was at first something that appeared like a very small and innocuous spot on her back, that was slightly raised above the skin, but if knocked bled.  While she was surprised the doctors were needing to do a biopsy, there were further shocks in store, as she was told it was a melanoma, and then an additional test would be done to see if and how many of her lymph nodes were affected.   This test revealed that not only were a significant number of lymph nodes affected but she was diagnosed as stage 4 melanoma.

Teisha then commenced oral chemotherapy. Of course, as a young active women she tried to continue to work and socialise as she did not want to be labelled as the “sick girl”, but she developed chemo fever several times which caused her to be frequently hospitalised in the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, far away from where Teisha and her family were living on the Mornington Peninsula. Each time she was hospitalised for the fever, her chemotherapy regime would need to be halted. In addition 2020 and 2021 were the covid years where Melbourne was often locked down and no visitors were allowed to come into the hospital due to her extremely  compromised immune system.  This meant the course of oral chemotherapy meant to take 1 year stretched out to 1.5 years. 

Throughout all this time Teisha kept her positive attitude and fought hard to ultimately complete the chemotherapy and then begin the slow gradual improvement in her health, with setbacks of being hospitalised multiple times due to being extremely unwell. Teisha acknowledges how much the love and support of her family, friends and her boyfriend assisted her in her journey through cancer.  She was also able to talk to how her diagnosis and illness was just as hard for her parents, grandparents, siblings and boyfriend to live with. 

Her joy at finally being classed as in remission this year, and her recent engagement to the young man she had only just met at the start of the diagnosis has really made 2025 a year to remember!

Photos shows Vice president Ruth presenting Lesley with her 10 year service badge.

Photos show Mez, Jill and Dorothy preparing the trading table for our July meeting, and the wonderful results of their tireless work.

Members enjoyed an outing to Mulberry Hill Farm and Homestead. 

The beautiful homestead can be seen in the accompanying photo.

In March, Members enjoyed an outing  to the Cranbourne Botanical Gardens. 

Photo shows L-R: Judy, Dot, Heather, Dorothy, Bev, Pat and Audrey.