While David, 25, is a gentle and softly spoken young man, he is also a loud and proud Mater Chicks in Pink supporter.
David is a growing number of supporters to celebrate and honour the strength, bravery and resilience of breast cancer patients.
He is passionate about improving awareness, research and patient care outcomes for the incredible women, like his mum, Sandra, who are living with and beyond breast cancer.
Sandra successfully battled stage four cancer in 2008-09 while David was in primary school. She underwent a double mastectomy and gruelling chemotherapy treatments. Sandra relapsed in 2020, just prior to the COVID pandemic, but has since been given the all-clear.
Alongside older sisters, Angela and Sofia, David has matured into adulthood in the interim years of Sandra’s dual cancer battles. So too has his perspective of the daunting journey his mum, and father Livio, underwent while nurturing their tight-knit family.
“I was 10-11 at the time, in Grade 6, I just remember coming home from school one day and obviously Mum was quite upset, and my grandmother was over,” David recalls.
“I guess it was hard to understand the gravity of what was going on, I didn’t fully understand, it’s hard to grasp that sort of concept at that age. As I’ve gotten a bit older, it’s something I’ve looked back on with a lot of respect for my mum and my parents on how they handled it.”
Although Sofia lives in London, the whole family embarked upon a huge fundraising effort for Mater Chicks in Pink this year. David and Angela even joined their parents to walk at International Women’s Day Fun Run last March.
This October, during Breast Cancer Awareness Month, David is again advocating for yet more research and patient care advancements like those his mum has benefited from.
“Anyone who is looking to get involved with fundraising, absolutely, you just have to,” David said. “It’s just a great thing to do.
“It’s very empowering for you and it means so much to those people who are going through the treatment. It doesn’t take much time out of your day, and it can mean the world to someone. It’s a really good thing to do.
“Mum’s massive into the research side, she really wants to support that and make sure there’s always research being done and steps being taken forward.
“When she had the relapse in 2020, the treatment had already become so much better, in that short period of time. It felt like it was dealt with so much better, and she was a lot more confident about how everything was going. She had chemotherapy the first time but didn’t need to go through that again.
“It’s scary for the family still, but the whole situation seemed a lot more under control. Through that time the doctors and everyone’s knowledge had just gotten a lot more confident, so I think if you can build that confidence, then breast cancer doesn’t need to be a massive, massive scare. People can be confident to deal with it and I think that’s important as well.
