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“The next time I struggled through to the end and the teachers let me hand in assignments a week late when I was having my mastectomy done. They were so wonderful and let me finish at my own pace."
When Lois Murphy discovered she had breast cancer, she had to make a choice.
She had just been accepted into the Box Hill Institute hairdressing course and didn’t know if she should go ahead with it.
“But I had aimed to do it before I got the cancer and I thought, ‘I’m going to keep doing it now’,” said Lois.
It hasn’t been an easy road for the courageous wife of Paul and mother of three girls, Amy, 17, Kimberly, 15, and Stephanie, 10.
But her persistence paid off — she won the Rotary Club of Box Hill Achievement Award.
The award, which is part of the Outstanding Student of the Year Awards, recognises students who excelled despite difficult circumstances.
Lois completed the Certificate III in Hairdressing, won a scholarship to do the Certificate III in Beauty and was named Student of the Year twice within the Centre for Hair, Beauty and Floristry.
She accomplished all this while she was battling cancer, undergoing chemotherapy, radiation treatment and finally a mastectomy.
Ironically, she had applied for the hairdressing course because she finally wanted “to do something for myself” after having children and donating a kidney to her husband when he needed a transplant.
“It was something I had always wanted to do when I was younger and didn’t have the confidence to do it or the opportunity,” she said.
“I have loved it. I have had so much fun and the teachers have been fantastic and it has been really good.”
Lois has proven to be no ordinary student — she has a rare determination to see things through to the end.
“The first time I was diagnosed with breast cancer I deferred for a couple of months while I did chemotherapy and then went back while doing radiation treatment,” she said.
“The next time I struggled through to the end and the teachers let me hand in assignments a week late when I was having my mastectomy done. They were so wonderful and let me finish at my own pace.
“This year with the Diploma of Beauty Therapy I struggled with the chemo and I was going to defer again.
“But when I went in to see my teachers, they said I was up-to-date with everything and coping better than most of the girls.”
Lois said her family had been a great support to her during this time.
“My husband and all the girls absolutely love the fact that I’m doing this course,” she said.
01 August 2005
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