Australian actress and content creator Alea O’Shea says she remains in a positive mindset and has big career plans despite battling brain cancer at the age of 25.
The former Home and Away star received her diagnosis in November after a biopsy revealed a tumour in the parietal lobe of the right side of her brain.
She has since undergone several rounds of radiation and oral chemotherapy, which has caused her hair to fall out and loss of movement to the left side of her body.
O’Shea, who stars in the film Dead Eyes, released last week, appeared on Sunrise and The Morning Show on Monday, where she gave the country an update on her health and life outlook.
“I’m in the more stable period,” she told Larry Emdur and Kylie Gillies.
“Of all cancer diagnoses, a young person is never stable; it’s tumultuous, I’m focusing on what I can do.”
O’Shea is coming to terms with her new body after gaining weight during treatment and dealing with swollen legs that are so bad she “can’t get out of bed without a cane” and can only walk for 15 minutes.
O’Shea revealed to Body+Soul that she has lost feeling in her left arm, hand and leg and can’t tell the difference between a tennis ball and a pen if she’s holding them blindfolded.
“I have to accept right now that I am disabled. I’m learning to work with the body I have, rather than trying to force it to be the body it once was,” she said.
One thing the actress is doing is helping other women who are also living with cancer by raising money to assist them financially through her charity Ceare.
The Ceare Wig Fund aims to help women across Australia have access to bonded wigs during medical hair loss to make their journey that little bit easier.
“When I lost my hair, I was still 25-years-old and I still care about that stuff,” O’Shea said. “I was lucky enough to afford (a wig), but there are so many women who can’t.”
Since January, Ceare, through a GoFundMe page, has raised more than $14,000 of an $18,000 goal.
As O’Shea’s social media presence gets bigger, she has big dreams for her acting career, which includes wanting to produce an A24 film.
The “emotions and dark humour” surrounding her cancer journey have also inspired some “interesting ideas” she wants to bring to life.
“This has opened new avenues, I have a lot of spare time through treatment, and I’m tapping into new things and trying to find the positive in them,” she said.
She also wants “to work in LA and live in New York, and even explore projects in the UK”, she told Body+Soul.
In March, a GoFundMe page was created for O’Shea to allow her friends, family and fans to support her by helping out financially for expensive medical treatments.
More than $93,000 has been donated, which will allow her to continue getting the care and surgeries she needs to fight the cancer.
Not only did O’Shea have brain surgery where surgeons removed as much of the tumour as they could, but the young star also had her ovary removed before she started chemo and radiation.
“The pain (from the ovary surgery) was intense, but because they took my whole ovary, I’ll have eggs in case I want to do IVF in the future, which is great,” she told Body+Soul.
