Goodness Be business owner Bea Moss diagnosed with lung cancer

A business owner and mother has revealed her fight with a ‘silent killer’ that left her with a collapsed lung and forced her out of work as she faces a $55k treatment bill.

A well-known Kin Kin business owner has revealed the moment she discovered she had cancer after doctors drained almost four litres of liquid out of her collapsed lung.

Bea Moss had only celebrated her celebrated her 50th birthday when she was given the life changing news she had stage four lung cancer following a persistent cough.

After living a healthy life, Mrs Moss said the diagnosis from doctors at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital on July 3, 2022 was a “shock to the system”.

“Doctors call it a silent killer because the cough is such a normal thing that can go unnoticed,” Mrs Moss said.

“By the time I got to it the liquid had got to my lungs and it was too late.”

Bea Moss of 'Goodness Be'. Picture: John McCutcheon

The 50-year-old Kin Kin mum said her cough was misdiagnosed in May, 2022 as a side-effect of working in cold rooms due to her work.

Mrs Moss owns Goodness Be, an organic produce business which has delivered wooden crates of produce across the Sunshine Coast since 2019.

After her breathing became harder Mrs Moss presented to SCUH where doctors discovered she had a collapsed lung.

“They drained almost 4L of fluid out of my lung … [doctors] were very concerned, and said it either meant I had heart failure or cancer, and I had cancer,” she said.

Mrs Moss is a non-smoker and she said there was no test for her particular type of lung cancer.

She was diagnosed with a rare mutation of her lung cancer called ALK which is in her lung and lymph nodes.

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Mrs Moss’ doctors said her best chance of survival would be through targeted clinical treatment rather than chemotherapy.

The treatment is not yet government funded, with the out-of-pocket cost for the targeted therapy treatment $7000 a month with her estimated treatment cost currently at $55,000.

Mrs Moss and her family were in the middle of renovating their home and she had been forced to stop working due to her illness.

A fundraiser has been created to help the Moss family.

You can donate here.