Gold Coast tourism ambassador Melissa Burrows reveals truth of cancer battle
She was once the face of the Gold Coast - getting selfies with high-profile visitors as the city’s official ambassador in the early 2000s. Now she faces the fight for her life and feels alone.
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She was once the face of the Gold Coast - getting selfies with high-profile visitors as the city’s official ambassador in the early 2000s.
But now, Melissa Burrows, 46, faces the fight for her life, saying she feels alone and let down by what she believes is an overwhelmed health system.
Ms Burrows - who once did a stint as a Surfers Paradise Meter Maid and has photos with visiting broadcaster David Koch - is terrified after a shock diagnosis of multiple cancers.
She is filming her medical journey for social media, tracking multiple surgeries as hundreds of online viewers watch on saddened by her helplessness.
“I’m still here, another surgery or else I’ll probably die,” she tells them in one video. “How the hell can I do this?”
Despite brave attempts to be cheerful, online filters cannot hide her failing health.
The ex-Gold Coast Ambassador was initially diagnosed with breast cancer - “invasive carcinoma” - then received a second diagnosis of melanoma less than a month later.
She has since been left rail-thin, having lost 14kg in just a few months, struggling to breathe and finding even a short walk around her house difficult.
“(The doctor) took two moles off and I said, ‘This is weird, my skin doesn’t feel right and the pain is horrendous’,” she said.
“Then he rang me on a Thursday. He said it was grade 4 melanoma. I said, ‘Oh no, please don’t. I just got told I have breast cancer on Monday.”
Grade 4 cancers have the most abnormal-looking cells - they typically grow and spread faster, and can spread to distant organs.
Her life is far from when she filmed parties staged by the city’s tobacconist empire tycoon Travers ‘The Candyman’ Beynon, modelled as a Gold Coast Meter Maid and travelled the world to promote the city and teach business to university students.
She became a local celebrity in 2004 as a Gold Coast Ambassador, the daughter of well-known Coast identities Ron and Pam Burrows.
Pam was Miss Burleigh and Queensland’s Miss Sun Girl, while Ron was maître d’ of the Paradise Room and the Parisienne Room in the Chateau in the 60s.
Melissa’s frustrations with the health system, saying she’s had to take multiple trips between Gold Coast University Hospital and Robina Hospital, often filmed as she is driven by friends.
She said she wanted to see staff and patients supported more.
“With an election coming up and our city growing rapidly, our health system needs more and the workers on the frontline need more.”
She faces another surgery next week. After that comes months of chemotherapy.
“I was lucky they spent three hours the other day getting my mum and I to wrap our heads around what is happening (because) we were imagining I was not in as much trouble as they were saying,” she told a friend.
“Mum comforted me, which made me cry because I thought nobody really cares whether I make it through this.
“I really have to be grateful to the cancer staff. The cancer team at Robina have held my hand during this.
She said she hasn’t decided whether to go through with chemotherapy.
She added almost harder than navigating the health system and surviving two surgeries, is the feeling of being forgotten by all the people she thought cared for her.
A Facebook group set up by Ms Burrows connecting fellow sufferers - Breast Cancer Buddies Gold Coast - has four dozen members.
“I do have anxiety, I do have depression now. I don’t know who I am anymore.
“I actually had a male friend say, ‘what are you going to do now, your breasts are gone’, and I said: ‘is that all you think I have going for me?’
“The biggest gift and the biggest horror of cancer is you find out what’s true in your life and who really cares.
“And you find out who posts about mental health on their Facebook but wouldn’t send you a message.
“After a lifetime of helping people, no one gets it.”
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