Prolonged exhaustion the only sign of Jo's sinister illness: 'I would wake up tired'

Jo O'Halloran thought her hot flushes were a sign of menopause.

"Especially being mid-50s, you're having a hot flush so you assume it's menopause," Jo, 56, tells 9Honey.

Except they were worse at night, and after a couple of years she became overwhelmingly tired – the sort of fatigue a good rest didn't help.

"I would wake up tired," she says.

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"I even looked at sleeping apps and all sorts of things, trying to find little ways to work out what's going on.

"Anybody I spoke to said it was probably 'bloody menopause' because they are all a similar age to me. They were experiencing it, and they were probably similar symptoms - tired, cranky, all of that."

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It's not that Jo felt sick, she was just very, very tired all of the time.

"Apart from being tired, you just get on with life."

She would eventually visit a GP for help and despite multiple tests, including a blood work up, nothing was flagged.

A second doctor sent her off for a breast screen and bone density test and started her on hormone replacement therapy.

These tests were all clear, so Jo tried to continue on with her life.

"I probably left it a bit long," she admits.

"I really needed to get to the bottom of it. I knew I shouldn't be feeling this tired. I'd stopped drinking, bought a treadmill, I was trying to all the right things to take care of myself better. I just couldn't seem to shake the tiredness and the hot flushes."

Then, pain flared in her left side.

"It was a Monday and I didn't have a lot of work on so I thought, 'Bugger it. I'm just going to take a day off and go and get this looked at'," she recalls.

"It was more of a nuisance pain. I wasn't in agony. A bit of a dull ache, and the night before I felt a bit fluey so I had booked into a doctor's appointment."

Jo was surprised when her doctor suggested she go to hospital. Still, she drove herself to her local emergency department. More tests were performed, but they assumed she had a digestive tract infection called diverticulitis and started her on antibiotics.

"I was going to be in overnight and I hadn't even packed a bag," she says.

She called her sister to bring her some things and she promised to after dinner.

Then, her hospital room filled with people, doctors, nurses, all looking very concerned.

"I was like, 'What are you doing here?'"

They told her they'd found a large mass. Jo wondered if they'd mistaken her for someone else.

She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that had spread to her liver. Jo knew her prognosis was not good. She was also told her cancer was inoperable.

"I knew family members that had, my sister-in-law's auntie had died of pancreatic cancer and yeah I know that's a deadly one," she says.

"My mum has lung cancer, my dad had leukemia so I've certainly, over the last five, six years, been around cancer."

Her father passed away in 2018 but her mother Jen, 82, continues to live with the disease.

Telling her sister Gabrielle, 54, and mother about her diagnosis after they had already suffered so much loss was difficult.

"We all hugged and cried," she says.

Jen decided to take herself to the US for a solo trip, something that had been on her 'bucket list'.

Now returned, Jo is expected to commence PRRT treatment at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, the only place where treatment is subsidised in Queensland.

Further investigation found her cancer was neuroendocrine, which means it is hormonal.

There are currently 25,570 Australian people living with neuroendocrine cancer. Due to the nature of the symptoms, it's often not picked up for several years, delaying treatment and worsening the prognosis of patients.

"I'm not gonna lie down. I'll fight," Jo says. She receives treatment each Tuesday and regular scans.

"I'm still super tired, that sort of comes in waves. I get out of breath sometimes when I'm walking up stairs. I might wake up with a bit of pain in my side or my back or in my joints and the next day it is gone.

"I haven't had any hot flushes, which has been great."