Cancer crusader loses own fight
Only months ago, young mother-of-two Leanne Russo was fundraising for cancer research, quietly hopeful she had beaten a rare and devastatingly aggressive form of breast cancer.
Tragically, Perth Glory is now fundraising for her husband Gary and their children Ilana, 5 and Jaden, 2, after the 36-year-old lost her battle on February 3, her body riddled with secondary cancers.
Her greatest wish had been to watch her children grow up and she worried that if she died they would forget her.
"Will I live long enough for them to remember me? How could this be happening to me," she wrote on her fundraising page for the Weekend to End Women's Cancer.
"Why would God let me have two beautiful children who mean the world to me and then take me away from them when they need me and I need them so much?"
Mr Russo, a former physiotherapist with Perth Glory, said he encouraged his wife to document her journey in the hope they could look back at it years later when she was in good health. Instead, it will help their children understand when they are older what she went through and how much she loved them.
Mrs Russo was diagnosed in May 2013 with stage-three triple negative inflammatory breast cancer, a very rare disease accounting for only one to 2 per cent of all breast cancers.
The 34-year-old noticed lumps in her left breast when she was breastfeeding three-month-old Jaden but put it down to mastitis.
By the time the cancer was picked up, she had a 9cm tumour and cancerous lymph nodes.
After 12 months of treatment including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy, the signs were encouraging.
She even joked with her then three-year-old daughter about wearing a wig after losing her hair and explained all the tubes in her body as "mummy needing some special medicine to make her boob better".
But six months ago she found more lumps behind her left collarbone and scans showed secondary cancers in her bones and lungs, and later in her spinal fluid.
"She went though more treatment but it went crazy out of control and her body couldn't take it any more," Mr Russo said.
"She tried so hard to hang on for the kids."
Mr Russo now wants to honour her by being the best father he can be to their children.
Perth Glory head physiotherapist Chris Hutchinson had his hair shaved off last weekend to help with a fundraiser which has so far secured more than $5500 for the Russo family.
"Gaz is a good friend who has been through a lot with Leanne being pretty crook for some time and now with two young kids to look after," Mr Hutchinson said.
