SUNBURY'S Leah Morenos, 25, is turning a personal tragedy into something positive.
In 2008, Leah's brother Pete, who had just turned 21, died after a short battle with leukaemia.
Leah is now doing her PhD, researching childhood leukaemia at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute in the hope of finding a cure for the disease.
"I'd always planned to do a PhD and always wanted to look at cancer research. With Pete having leukaemia, it took me a couple of years in between his passing for me to actually start, but there's so much still left unknown [about the disease] so I decided to get into that," she said.
"I've been there six months now and it's going well. Combined with the Leukaemia Foundation work outside of that, it feels good knowing that something is being done.
"At the moment I'm trying to figure out more of the biology of leukaemia and once you figure out what's happening you can figure out a treatment for it; that's my aim."
Leah is also a Leukaemia Foundation gold balloon ambassador for the organisation's fund-raising event, Light the Night, on September 15.
Pete, a former Salesian College student, was 20 when he was diagnosed with leukaemia.
"He was at uni at the time and doing a fairly demanding course.
"We thought it was just the exam period and having everything due [like assignments] so he was just getting run down," Leah said.
"The week he went on holidays he wasn't getting any better. We sent him to the doctor and he had blood tests done. The doctor said, 'Maybe we'll send you off for this leukaemia test as well'.
"He came home and I remember him saying, 'Ha, I might have leukaemia' and then he ran back out and went to the doctor and he was in hospital that night. We just thought he had a cold, a bad flu.
"He went straight into the Royal Melbourne Hospital, into the oncology ward and they ran some more tests.
"They did some bone marrow biopsies and he started chemo virtually straightaway."
Pete was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in mid-2007.
Leah said if the disease was not detected early, sufferers often died within a few months.
"They found it just in time and we were lucky enough to get a bone marrow donor from the US, so he went through that procedure.
"[But] on a Friday night [following the operation] he'd gone from 4per cent leukaemia cells to 95per cent on Monday. That's how quickly it happened; it overran his new bone marrow and it all went downhill from there."
Pete died in May 2008, just 70 days after the operation.
Leah said: "Pete's strength, heart and memory inspires me every day. He was such an inspiration to everybody because he wanted to be an ambassador [for the foundation] when he got diagnosed.He couldn't do it so we decided to try and carry it on for him.
"He wanted to be a white balloon ambassador. He wanted to go out and speak to people about his experience and what they could do to support the Leukaemia Foundation.
"That spurs me and my family on. We're trying to take a positive out of what could be a really big negative."
To make a donation to Leah's Light the Night campaign, visit www.lightthenight.org.au and search for 'Pete's Feet'.
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