Paramedics grant cancer patient's dying wish surrounded by family
A Victorian cancer patient has had her final wish come true thanks to paramedics.
Michelle, from Shepparton in Victoria’s northeast, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 and was given only six to nine months to live.
The 54-year-old grandmother had a long fight with breast cancer and it recently spread throughout her body.
Her son, Alex, said growing up “every family holiday” was spent at the beach.
“She would just sit with her eyes closed, listening, while myself and my three siblings messed about,” he said.
Alex is one of Michelle’s four children including Victoria, Sebastian and Charlotte.
As one of her final wishes, Michelle’s four children asked Ambulance Victoria and the Mordialloc Life Saving Club to take the 54-year-old to the beach before she died.
Alex said the day at Mordialloc, south of Melbourne, was bittersweet.
Michelle was pictured by Ambulance Victoria surrounded by family, gazing out at the surf from her wheelchair.
The picture was shared on Twitter with many praising paramedics for a gesture the family “hold very dear to their hearts”.
“What a beautiful and sad story,” one woman tweeted.
Another added it was “so sweet” for paramedics to grant her a dying wish.
“We wanted to thank you for giving us the opportunity to take mum to the beach one final time. It has made us feel so thoroughly supported,” Alex said.
“It’s a really awful thing seeing someone in a palliative environment, and this gave mum the opportunity to be a person again, a person that does the things that they like to do as opposed to being a sick person that has to be in hospital.
“It gave her the chance to feel like she was just someone doing what they wanted to do on a normal afternoon.”
Michelle’s children also organised fundraisers for the McGrath Foundation and have raised more than $7500.
Michelle passed away on February 26 with her ashes spread across her favourite beach at her sister’s house in Tasmania.
Last month, a dying Sydney grandmother was granted her dying wish to watch the sunset at Brighton-Le-Sands beach, south of the CBD, with her husband.
Carmen Leon de la Barra, who migrated from Chile more than 25 years ago, died from cancer two days later.
In October, a Queensland ambulance crew were praised for taking a palliative care patient to a beach at Hervey Bay, north of Brisbane.
Their kind gesture attracted the attention of Kensington Palace too.
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