Two young Kiwi women who were diagnosed with the same rare type of cancer meet. One is now in remission. The other is terminally ill.
Georgia Burt and Hayley Killalea look like they have known each other for a long time.
The smiles, the warmth, the unspoken understanding. To onlookers, this won’t seem like a beginning; this looks like a continuation.
The truth is they have only just met in person.
But they had been chatting on social media for years, connecting after discovering they both had myxoid liposarcoma - a rare cancer that starts in fatty tissue.
Killalea, 30, reached out to Burt, 31, first, after seeing her post about going through treatment. Overwhelmed with the stresses that came with her diagnosis and treatment at the time, Burt replied eight months later.
“When you’re in it and when you’re feeling it, you can’t always take on other people’s stories,” she says before looking at Killalea, who is already nodding in agreement.
In 2022, Burt, who works as a ZM radio host, went through five weeks of intense radiation to shrink a cancerous lump on her thigh before surgery to remove it.
She has a 20cm scar on her leg and is now cancer free, but still gets tested regularly.
“To see someone else around your age, in the same city, with your same rare cancer - that was crazy,” says Killalea, who is based in Auckland like Burt.
“And at that time, I was almost a year in remission, so I was like, I know what it’s like to have everyone’s stories come at you and this person’s cousin’s, aunty’s, you know, dog had cancer.
“So I was like, honestly, no pressure to reply. I get it. I understand it, but just so you know, this is where I’m at. Like, I had this cancer, same place. Our stories are very similar.”
Killalea was diagnosed in 2021. Back then, there was one tumour in her leg. In January 2024, she was told the cancer had spread “to the point it was incurable”.
“You don’t know how to be there for someone or you don’t even know the words to say as someone who’s gone through it, because it’s a completely different situation now,” Burt says to Killalea, who candidly shares her cancer journey on social media, often using dark humour to express herself.
“There are no words that I could give to Hayley, but just seeing all the love that she’s got and the way [she’s] handled [her]self through social media, which can be a bloody hard place, especially for something so sensitive.”
Both have experienced uncomfortable reactions from people after hearing about their cancer.
Burt explains the moment the “C word” is said, it can change the person’s mood or behaviour towards the person with the cancer.
“It’s a hard one because you’re so grateful but you also feel this thing of like, I don’t want that to be the definition of what’s happening right now,” she says.
In these situations, Killalea says she’s become “very unapologetic”.
“It’s actually not on me how you react to it.”
@hayleykillalea Here for a good time not a long time #cancer #fyp
♬ BoJack and Diane x Dark Red - Lauren🥱
She also likes to add a bit of humour.
“I tell people I’m retired and then they ask why and I say, ‘Oh, it’s really easy. You just get terminal cancer’, and that kind of breaks the ice,” Killalea says.
Asked how she wants to be treated by people, Killalea’s response was simple: “Honestly just treat me like normal ... I don’t want pity”.
Killalea tells people she’s lived a good life and she’s “probably lived a more full life than a lot of people who think they’re going to get 90-plus years”.
She’s ticked off all the things she wanted to do on her bucket list.
Highlights include staying in a Paris hotel with an Eiffel Tower view eating “those big croissants”, seeing Doja Cat at Coachella, and going to New York with friends and seeing Hamilton on Broadway.
But now she just wants to be with the people she loves.
“The biggest lesson for me has been that it’s all about your people and how you spend time with them,” says Killalea.
“I wasn’t a very good communicator, but when you’re in a position where you’re sick, or you don’t have a lot of time left, and you need to be specific about how you want to spend that time and who you want around, and what you expect from other people in terms of how they treat you ... you kind of have to get really firm on your boundaries and good at communicating them,” she says.
Burt has learned that being present is important.
“We’re told all the time to be present in the moment, but it’s not until I guess you have something that could take that future away, or change the future for you, that you learn that it’s actually really important to just be in that moment with your friends and with yourself,” she says.
Killalea does not know exactly how long she has left. But she knows how she wants to be remembered. “Just someone who lived a good life and was really f****** funny,” she says.
And is she at peace? “I am, yeah, for the most part,” she says, adding that it would be remiss to not say she doesn’t have moments of feeling scared.
“I’ve had the time and I’ve done everything I want to do. And ... you know, there’s something that comes for everyone. It’s one of the most universal human experiences.
“We don’t expect it to happen to us, and we don’t think about it, but when you’re faced with it and you do the work to kind of come to terms with that, and have the privilege of time and resources to live the life you want to live - then I think that makes a good recipe for being at peace.”
Georgia Burt and Hayley Killalea will chat on stage about their journeys today at NZME’s ANZ Donation Station fundraiser event. Text DONATE to 3493 to make an instant $3 Donation to the Cancer Society.