Kelly Hashemi was almost 40 when she began bleeding between periods, becoming bloated and experiencing anxiety that wouldn’t let her sleep.
Doctors told her it was perimenopause. No one ordered a scan. She was the one who, on her own, paid for a private one in July 2022 — and that’s when the truth emerged: stage-three ovarian cancer, already spread throughout her body.
The surgery she underwent was brutal: they opened her up from her neck to her pubic bone, removed her entire uterus, part of her liver, her bladder and diaphragm. Two weeks in intensive care.
Months of rehabilitation. When she finally returned to teaching at Newcastle High School for Girls, a new scan seven weeks later confirmed the worst: the cancer had returned.
She was given two options. With surgery, a year to live. Without it, only a few months. Kelly, a primary school teacher from Gateshead, chose the scalpel again — not out of hope of being cured, but to buy herself more time before death and stay a little longer with Tabitha, her 13-year-old daughter.
She died at St Bede’s Hospice, where she spent her final three months. Her husband, Arya, ran the Great North Run to raise money for the same hospice that cared for her until the end.