Young woman suffering from terminal cancer reveals what it feels like to face death

"I'm in love with life and to die is to take away my greatest love"

(Terminally Fabulous)

“It doesn't matter how long you have ‘terminal’ attached to you, it never becomes easier, you never just get used to it,” says Lisa Magill. But that’s exactly what the 34-year-old from Brisbane has had to do.

First diagnosed just after her 30th birthday, Magill has been fighting cancer for four years. Seven months after her diagnosis of a rare cancerous tumour, Magill’s treatment was complete. But less than a year later, she found out the cancer was back.

As a way of talking about “the good, the bad and the ugly side of all things cancer”, Magill started a blog, Terminally Fabulous, in January 2016, and has since gathered nearly 30,000 followers on Facebook.

Despite her circumstances, Magill manages to write in an upbeat way at times, encouraging younger generations to watch Clueless and explaining how she can now “pick any True Blood cast member’s ass from a line up”.

But Magill’s zest for life makes her blog posts all the more painful to read: “It's simple, I'm in love with life and to die is to take away my greatest love,” she writes.

In recent posts, Magill has written incredibly honestly about struggling to come to terms with death, explaining that no one can really know how they feel about death until they’re faced with it: “It’s just as hard to swallow as a wheatgrass shot laced with pigeon poop, it never gets easier, if anything it gets harder.”

Despite having strong faith, Magill revealed she’s started questioning the existence of heaven: “Before this b*****d of a disease, I had no doubt that there was a heaven, but now that I'm faced with my own death, that part of the dying process isn't so certain [...] The thought of not being reconnected with your loved ones once you die scares the sh*t out of me,” she writes.

Her posts are heart-wrenchingly sad but also incredibly insightful - she explains how the supposed pain “relief” provides no relief at all, but “the tiredness and confusion momentarily distracts my body.”

(Terminally Fabulous (Terminally Fabulous)

She explains how despite being incredibly grateful for the support of her loved ones, the news of her cancer’s return made Magill distance herself from her friends: “The sheer energy it takes to make my thoughts connect with my mouth is too much,” she explains.

And whilst other people are positive she’ll make it, “they're not the ones inside my diseased body,” she writes. “My body has been battling against itself for so long, eventually one of us is going to have to give in and looking at my recent scans, it seems it's me that's reaching for the white flag.”

One of the reasons Magill may have built up such a large following is due to her incredibly honest writing style and refusal to hold anything back.

She writes about wishing someone would die with her so she wasn’t facing it alone, but admits it sounds horrible to say.

Magill also reveals she envies the old ladies she sees in hospitals who have little more to complain about than the air conditioning, but she knows she’ll regret those thoughts: “I can't help but think, be grateful you made it,” she explains.

And she wonders if it’s easier to face death when you’re old: “Maybe I'd be looking forward to it, because the ones I love have already gone.”

Unless you’ve been there, none of us can imagine how Magill feels every night, scared to go to sleep in case she doesn’t wake up: “Imagining tomorrow without me in it, how can everyone else still be here at some point and I won't?”

For a woman whose greatest love is life, the fear of dying is just too much to accept.