Over the course of the intensive 10 week renovation show, Our First Home contestant Anne Gourley expects to face a number of tough challenges and have plenty thrown her way. But it’s an adventure she says she’s well up for, and one she actively sought out, after Anne was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy last year. Anne (57) was still recovering from the surgery and only in her third week back at her job as a hospice nurse, when she got the call to say her family had been selected for the TV One reality show, which will see her and her husband Al (57) buy and renovate a home in record time to help their daughter Amy (21) and son-in-law Matt (21) get onto the property ladder. It will be a gruelling and physically challenging three months as they live under the same roof to completely overhaul the home, but Anne says the project was just the ticket. “The cancer really did change my perspective – it’s made me much more inclined to really whip into life,” says Anne. It was during a routine mammogram that Anne’s cancer was first picked up. She had no reason to think anything was amiss, but “I knew pretty much straight away after arriving something wasn’t right,” she remembers. “The person doing the scan suddenly became more brisk and professional. She was trying hard to not let it show, but I could tell that something was off.”
Anne put her worries aside, though, reassuring herself that around 90% of lumps turn out to be benign. But on taking along her builder husband Al to a follow-up appointment, she was whisked through for an ultrasound. “At times like that, it’s not good to be a nurse, because you know enough to know you’re in trouble, but not enough to know much else,” she says with a sigh. “As soon
as they put the transducer on me, a device which looks for cancer markers, the screen lit up with the image. I saw it and thought, ‘That’s cancer.’” In that moment, Anne feared the absolute worst. “I’m a hospice nurse, so I deal with people at the very end stages of cancer. In the second I glimpsed the scan, I already had myself dead and buried!” But seeing Al’s reaction to the news was perhaps even more distressing again. “Sometimes it’s actually easier when it’s you it’s happening to,” she says. “When you’re standing by, feeling helpless and you’ve heard the word ‘cancer’, well… He was freaking,” she says softly.
Anne was supported throughout her treatment by her family including husband Al, daughter Amy and son-in-law Matt.
The tight twosome, who have been together since they were teenagers, got through the experience the only way they know how – with a whole lot of love and laughter. “We were on the way home in the car and Al said, ‘That’s it, I’m converting downstairs into a sick room – we’ll open it up so you can see what’s happening in the lounge room, and you can just stay in there.’ “He had me bedbound before we’d even made it home! It was so funny at the time. I just roared with laughter and said, ‘I’m not that sick, Al!’ We actually laughed a lot over that time, which really helped.” Also helping her journey to recovery, she says, was the strong faith she and Al share. That, and the fact that when the pathology results came back, showing she had pleomorphic-lobular carcinoma – a rare type that accounts for only 1% of all breast cancers diagnosed – she was talked through her options with Dr Peter Chin, one of the most highly regarded doctors in the field in all of Australasia. “He was wonderful. I was in amazing hands, made particularly amazing by the fact that I went through the public system and still ended up with the best.”
Anne chose to have a double mastectomy straight off the bat, and the days waiting for the surgery were the most difficult, as she could now feel the cancer growing and see it dimpling her skin. But after spending a week loathing what she used to regard as her best asset, she awoke the morning before the surgery with a change of heart. “I thought, these breasts had been an asset for me all my life, and here I am just saying, ‘Get rid of them! Get them off!’” she recalls. “I wanted to give them a proper send-off, so Al and I struck upon the idea of having a photographer take photos of the two of us as a couple, with me topless – not just as sexy photos, but to respect and honour them!” The young photographer they found prayed with the couple before taking reels of photos of the pair. It’s a process they hope to repeat in the coming months, to show off Anne’s changed figure. “I would so recommend doing that to anybody who is having any kind of figure-changing surgery,” she says. “It was such a lovely, affirming thing to do. It played a large part in recognising my relationship with Al, which obviously is so much more than skin or body deep.”
Anne, who has currently opted against a prosthesis or reconstruction, says she’s actually quite enjoying not having to wear a bra during filming of Our First Home. “I can just whip on a T-shirt, which is great in construction, and for dealing with the heat on the show too!” And as for Al, who describes himself as madly in love with Anne, he’s never been more proud or more in love with his wife. “There’s not a single thing about her that I would change,” he says, squeezing her hand. “Even through this whole breast cancer thing, she really is still the most beautiful girl in the world.”
Our First Home airs Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays at 7.30pm on TV One.
