Yvonne Tasker sits in a memorial garden to her son Michael, holding the book she wrote about his life.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
“Your child’s dying. There’s nothing we can do.”
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They are words no parent ever wants to hear.
When her son Michael was three, Shepparton’s Yvonne Tasker received this news from a doctor.
Decades later, Yvonne is telling the story she has carried for most of her life, a story of childhood cancer, a groundbreaking heart transplant, loss and the hope that has driven her to write her first book.
“It wasn't until I was at a good place in my life that I felt that I could tell his story,” she said.
Michael’s Tear took six years to write, but Yvonne persisted.
“This is a story that had to be told — for him, for his memory, but also to hopefully help other people who are on a similar journey,” she said.
Life changed one Easter when Michael started limping on his right leg.
“One day he was a normal toddler, full of energy and full of beans, and then he started limping,” she said.
The then 20-year-old Yvonne drove Michael to Melbourne after an X-ray revealed Ewing sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, in his leg.
Four months into chemotherapy, doctors delivered the devastating news: Michael was only expected to live for six more weeks.
“It was like a bomb going off,” Yvonne said.
Refusing to accept there were no options left, she searched for anything that might help.
“I lived and breathed finding a cure for Michael. I couldn’t comprehend the idea of him dying.”
Eventually, Yvonne took Michael to a naturopath in Geelong.
Despite her scepticism, Yvonne said Michael’s six-week prognosis came and went.
“Call it a miracle, call it whatever you want to, but little by little his limp eased,” she said.
Yvonne Tasker's new book, Michael’s Tear, beside a photo of her late son.
Photo by
Rechelle Zammit
But her son’s battle was not over.
Yvonne said that the chemotherapy had damaged Michael’s heart, causing cardiomyopathy.
“His heart was three times the size it should have been,” she said.
At the time, the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne had recently started performing heart transplants.
“At the age of 15, Michael was the third heart transplant they did. He got it on Australia Day in 1989,” she said.
“He was on death’s door so many times, but he always rallied.”
Although Michael was meant to live carefully, Yvonne said he was always on adventures, climbing Uluru, skydiving and camping.
“He squeezed every bit of life out of every second,” Yvonne said.
Suddenly, in 1993 on New Year’s Eve, Michael passed away in his sleep at the age of 19.
“He did things on days that you’re never going to forget,” Yvonne said.
Years after Michael’s death, Yvonne’s husband noticed a poster in a Shepparton café about KB’s Legacy, a charity established by Kyle Gemmill after his friend Brendon ‘KB’ Warburton died from the same cancer Michael had faced.
The foundation raises money for clinical trials and sarcoma research and awareness.
“It was the cause that I'd been looking for,” Yvonne said.
Despite being one of the most common cancers in children, Yvonne said sarcoma was not well known.
She hopes her book and KB’s Legacy will do more than honour those lost.
“It’s for Michael. It’s for KB. We can’t save them, but in their names we can create awareness, push for research and hopefully help save others in the future,” she said.
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