KEY POINTS:
Delta Goodrem was 18, with a Number 1 single in the charts, an album that had been bought by more than a million Australians, a starring role in Neighbours and was days away from a trip to New York to break into the US market.
She had been feeling tired and losing weight, but assumed it was the consequence of overwork, using one half of the day for acting, the other for music, with insufficient time for sleep. "One weekend, I flew from Sydney to London to do Top of the Pops, then flew back to be on the Neighbours set first thing on Monday morning." She decided exercise was the answer. On a trip to the gym, she felt a small lump in her neck, but her family doctor assured her it was just a swollen lymph gland and nothing to worry about. But the weight loss continued and the lump remained. A second doctor told her it ought to be fine.
"He said there was a one in 10 chance it could be serious and the moment he said it, I had a really strong feeling I was the one in 10." When she came out in a full-body rash, it was time for a proper hospital examination. But still she worked on. As she prepared to launch her new record in the States, her mother Lea and brother Trent arrived bearing dire news.
"My mum looked broken", recalls Goodrem. "She said the hospital had told her I had cancer and we had to go there straight away. I just went into shock. I was shaking, couldn't take it in. I mean, even though it does happen to younger people, you just never ever imagine it will happen to you. I can't describe how scared I was, real fear like I have never known before or since.
"Everything was going for me, I didn't even know the meaning of the word insecurity and suddenly I am surrounded by words like operation, cancer, chemotherapy, radiation. I bawled my eyes out for days. I felt like I imagine a cornered animal feels. And as well as your own pain, you're hurt by the pain others feel. I saw my dad crying for the first time in ages.
"But it was interesting - I wasn't thinking, why me? Once I was through the initial shock, I thought, this is my next challenge and how you deal with things will determine what kind of person you are."
The diagnosis was Hodgkin's lymphoma. The operation took place the next day, a small, barely noticeable scar on her neck the only permanent reminder. But she was in and out of hospital for a year, undergoing chemotherapy, radiation and steroid treatment before she was finally told she was in remission.
"The treatment was tough. I remember one day staring out of the window, longing to be able to just go for a walk and get a coffee. I looked in the mirror. My face had a green tinge. My hair was falling out. I had lost so much weight and I thought, I don't recognise this person. You know, rationally, you're the same person, but you look and feel so different."
Her illness was massive news in Australia. Papers filled pages with get-well messages from readers. Prime Minister John Howard expressed his support. Elton John called her, "giving me best wishes on behalf of England."
The media ran huge items on the disease, the treatment, her chances of survival. "I was blown away by the outpouring", says Goodrem. "We had so many flowers you'd have thought I'd robbed a florist. It was a huge thing, but it was like it was all going on somewhere else. When I got home, there were people outside the house the whole time and I was really still in my bubble, just me and the illness and my family and loved ones, concentrating on the challenge. Your whole perspective on life changes. Everything changes. I feel I lost my innocence to cancer."
It was, however, the public support that made her realise she had the ability not just to entertain but to raise funds and awareness for research into the illness. Well-wishers were sending in donations. Unsure what to do with them, she and her mother set up the Delta Goodrem Leukaemia and Lymphoma Trust which channels funds into research.
Based in London with partner Brian McFadden, of boy band Westlife, Goodrem has become a patron of the British charity Leukaemia Research. She intends to be active - not just a name on a letterhead - and her first job is to be the public face for one of the charity's biggest annual fundraising events, the Alternative Hair Show to be held in London in October. It is the brainchild of the hairdresser Tony Rizzo, who lost his 3-year-old son Valentino to leukaemia in May 1983, and has become an enormous celebration of the work of the best hairdressers in the world.
I meet Goodrem at a hair studio, surrounded by a small army of stylists, makeup artists, wigs and extensions experts and all the fuss and paraphernalia that goes with women's hair.
"I am so looking forward to this", she says. "When I was first diagnosed and told my hair would fall out, I just accepted it as part of the challenge. It fell out gradually and rather than go bald quickly, I had it cut shorter and shorter. It was like playing with a doll's hair. You'd just run your fingers through and a few strands would come out, or maybe a whole clump at a time. Eventually I was totally bald."
She has the pictures as a reminder. So powerful were the chemicals that when her hair started to grow back after treatment, it was grey. Today, aged 24, tall and tanned with hair cascading halfway down her back, she looks a picture of health.
"There is something really fitting about my first task with Leukaemia Research being about hair", she says. "I always had long hair. When you lose it, you realise just how important it is to your identity. In losing my hair, I felt I was losing a lot of my femininity. I love having my hair back. It is so important to how you feel, how you dress, how you look.
"Whether you have it short because you're feeling funky, or long and you love playing around with it, or you want to do something wild, like today, it's just such a big part of what we are. Having lost it all, I love my hair more than ever."
Now in remission, she says: "I don't know if you are ever in the clear because obviously you are more susceptible, with a low immune system. We're not sure if I can have kids yet. I've met a lot of inspirational people; many women would come up to me saying that against all odds, they had a healthy, growing family when they didn't think it was possible to have kids, which is amazing. I'm too young to worry about that right now. Only time will tell.
But she knows she is among the lucky ones. "I feel blessed. I am fit and strong. I am working hard, writing and performing, I am happy in my private life. I feel like I have it all going for me again. But there are people who don't survive. The research is making a difference, so if I can use what happened to me to help raise money to stop it happening to someone else, well, you've got to do it really.
- Observer
Delta Goodrem is due to release her third album, currently being recorded in London, this year.
