Welcome to Team Di!

We have decided to take on the Jodi Lee Foundation 25km Trek this year in honour of our dear mother and friend Diann DuBois, who passed away from colorectal cancer in February 2017 at the age of 66, leaving behind husband Pete, three children & their spouses, and three young grandsons.

After a cancer scare 10 years earlier, Di was classified as high-risk and had regular checkups and colonoscopies. Unfortunately a tumour was lurking in a difficult-to-detect area outside the colon and while we were thankful it was discovered, Di was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer (with it having spread to her lymph nodes) in 2015.

As surgery wasn’t an option for Di, she embarked on an intensive treatment plan of chemo and radiotherapy, requiring multiple visits to Adelaide from her home town of Cleve on the Eyre Peninsula, more than 500 km away.

Treatment bought Diann time: to enjoy more laughs with her family, including special times with her two oldest grandsons Aled and Bryn and meeting her newest grandson Jack; to see more of the world, with trips to Asia and New Zealand and multiple caravan trips to locations around SA; and achieve goals such as getting her ears pierced and completing the City to Bay 6km walk. Supported by her faith in God, her family and many friends, Di continued to live a good life - with cancer - facing her health challenge with grace, good humour, positivity, quiet determination and very few feelings of ‘woe is me’, in fact, often commenting how she wasn’t sad for herself but for the younger people with cancer and other health issues she came into contact with along the way.

It has been two years since Di’s passing, and we feel taking on this 25km challenge will be a fitting tribute to her, as well as an awesome opportunity to raise awareness of bowel cancer - the warning signs and the importance of early detection. It’s a good opportunity to improve our fitness at the same time.

We want to encourage everyone to educate themselves about the risk factors (following the Jodi Lee Foundation Facebook page is a great start) and to talk to their GP IMMEDIATELY after noticing any worrying changes in your body or your bowel movements. Are you going too much? Too little? Diarrhoea or constipation? Our busy lives aren’t that busy for a 10 minute appointment or a free bowel cancer screening kit, please just do it! (Having to deal with a bit of poo now could save you a lot of sh*t later on!)

Thank you for reading and for any donations toward our cause. Di would be pretty proud, I think!