Kellie was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer just three months after giving birth. Photo / Instagram, @kelliefinlayson_
A young Aussie woman battling aggressive cancer has taken to social media in response to “misleading” comments about her appearance.
Kellie Finlayson, 29, was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in 2021 just three months after she had given birth to her daughter, Sophia. Finlayson was told in 2022 the cancer had spread to her lungs.
There was a brief period of reprieve when the cancer became inactive, until test results in June 2024 revealed it had spread again.
Finlayson, who is married to former Port Adelaide player Jeremy Finlayson, has shared snippets of her cancer battle with her 73,500 Instagram followers. In between Finlayson’s treatments, she has shared heartwarming moments of her personal life – attending glamorous events, being an attentive mother, supportive wife and even some travel.
This has evidently prompted some social media users to question whether Finlayson is still battling cancer, who issued a blunt statement to commenters.
“Also fam, not that I should need to confirm this but I am very much still living with a stage four diagnosis and in the thick of active treatment,” Finlayson wrote on Instagram, according to Daily Mail Australia.
She said she has chemotherapy daily, as well as three weekly infusions and sporadic surgeries.
“I’ve heard so much noise and read so many misleading comments that suggest I’ve been, quote, ‘fine’ for over 18 months now,” she said.
“While I understand that I look well, I do that on purpose.”
She said she is the queen of tricking her own mind into believing that she is well so that she can show up as a mother, wife, author, speaker and advocate. She added the cancer is only one part of her.
“I’ve never let it consume me entirely and while the beginning was a little scarier, I’m still very much in the exact same position,” she said.
On Wednesday, after a night at an awards ceremony, Finlayson revealed she would be spending the day in the oncology ward receiving treatment.
“lol my life is wild,” the mother-of-one said.
It’s not the first time Finlayson has had to defend herself, her diagnosis and treatments. In February, Finlayson claimed that she had been compared to convicted wellness fraudster Belle Gibson, who was in 2017 ordered to pay a fine of $410,000 for misleading and deceptive conduct by Consumer Affairs Victoria.
The Sh!t Talkers podcast host said she hated Gibson for the hurt she caused to thousands who had cancer. She added that she had been compared to Gibson, simply because she sought alternative therapies.
“Having these docos and this Netflix series come out about all the of the hurt she caused, all of the lies she told … and then being referred to her as her name simply because I’ve sought alternate therapies, or I look really well … but being called this woman’s name is offensive – it’s abusive almost,” Finlayson said.
“Having gone through the things that she described … or pretended to have gone through and the way she manipulated people around her to empathise and to give her so much … it makes me physically ill.”
In October 2024, Finlayson revealed to news.com.au the impact that her cancer — and its treatment — had on her.
She said she had a stoma bag, lost a “sh*t tonne” of weight and had her hair fall out. But, while promoting skincare brand FUCA, she said there were unforeseen issues with her treatment.
Finlayson had never had any issues with her skin until six months after her first rounds of treatment.
“Initially, it was in the parts where I was getting radiated, which was expected. I was told that was going to happen in terms of the skin drying out or being more sensitive to certain things — or even just wiping my bum to be honest, cause that’s where I was radiated,” she told news.com.au.
“In the end, it ended up being sensitivity to the sun and that was my whole body obviously, but more so sensitive in already sensitive areas such as elbows, wrists and face.”
Finlayson said she likely did so well for so long as her appearance didn’t change for a long time.
“It was more so behind close doors that I saw the effects of everything — like scars aren’t visible often. My hair didn’t fall out until 18 months later when I relapsed,” she said.
“My appearance was really normal to those around me, so I was almost able to convince myself that I was normal as well. It was definitely behind closed doors that I was dealing with the superficial symptoms of the diagnosis.
“But, at the time, I was trying to manage the best I could for my own sake.”
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