Shock cancer diagnosis MUM LIVED TO WALK ME DOWN THE AISLE'

Having her beloved mother at her wedding was so important to wellness advisor  Sylvia that she got engaged and organised a wedding in  just two weeks!

- Amy Prebble

When Auckland health coach Sylvia Philcox was asked to attend W a hospital meeting about her late mother Ai Sukaesih's cancer treatment, she knew it wasn't going to be good news.

She and her partner Lukas Phan-huy had taken Ai into Auckland Hospital on 5 October last year as she was struggling to breathe. Doctors found a tumour in Ai's neck and by the 11th, they had diagnosed her with thyroid cancer.

"Initially, they thought she had papillary thyroid cancer, which is the most survivable," says Sylvia. "So there was some hope that she could have surgery to remove it. She was telling the doctors about how she'd like to keep the tumour to show her children."

Then on Friday 14 October, Sylvia was asked to go to a meeting room. "I was like, 'Oh, no, this was what happened with Dad," shares Sylvia. Her father Duncan, who had Parkinson's disease, tragically died in 2014 after he lost his balance and hit his head on the corner of a table.