A brave young nurse with terminal cancer has seen her lifelong dream of visiting Scotland come true as she completes her bucket list before she dies.
Eleanor McCleave, from a small town in western Australia called Esperance, says Scotland "is like something from a storybook" after she spent an incredible four days exploring the country. The 26-year-old has always planned to travel across since family friend Iain McLeod's vivid tales of his hometown on the Isle of Skye when she was a youngster.
Eleanor was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of brain cancer in November 2020 and in April this year she was given the devastating news that a tumour had appeared in her heart. With success rates of further chemotherapy very low, the nurse decided not to go through with more treatment - and instead spend her final six months ticking off everything she has always wanted to do from her bucket list.
After a fundraiser launched to help Eleanor do just that quickly reached over £40,000, her family were able to organise her dream trip - and she made the journey across to Scotland last week.
Eleanor told the Record: "Iain and his family were the first that my parents met when they moved to Esperance and he is from Skye, so I grew up listening to fairy stories about Skye from him. I'm also good friends with his son Lachlan, who is a couple of years older than me and it just sounded like such a magical place.
"Scotland in general has always seemed like such a magical place to me. I was blown away by the scenery, it is like nothing I have ever seen. It's like something out of a story book."
Eleanor and her mum and dad, Anne and Pete, drove up to Fort William before the Harry Potter fan rode on the Jacobite train to Mallaig. She has always dreamed of spending a night in a Scottish castle, so the family then headed to Tulloch Castle in Dingwall before rounding off their trip in Skye on Monday.
Eleanor said: "In the four days I had in Scotland I ate some haggis, drank champagne on the Jacobite train, went to Eilean Donan Castle, visited the fairy’s at the Isle of Skye’s Fairy Pools, strolled around Portree, spotted some highland cows, saw the ruins of Urquhart Castle, tried to spot the monster on Loch Ness, spent a couple nights at Tulloch Castle and ate a lot of tasty seafood.
"The scenery was unbelievable and the seafood was amazing. It was a great start to my trip."
Eleanor has a rare type of cancer called a High-Grade CNS high‐grade neuroepithelial tumour with BCOR alterations, which is a fast growing aggressive tumour that attacks the soft tissues of the body.
Before she was diagnosed, Eleanor was working in an operating theatre as a nurse in Perth - but in November 2020 she was rushed to hospital after having a seizure, and it was there that medics discovered she had brain cancer.
After an initial dose of brain radiation and surgery, Eleanor was given chemotherapy before she was told the devastating news that the cancer had spread as six tumours were discovered in her bowel in March 2021.
She was then put on another intense round of chemotherapy for five months which remarkably got rid of all of her tumours. But in April this year, she was given the news that doctors had discovered a new tumour directly in the centre of her heart.
Eleanor said: "We knew there was always going to be a very high chance the cancer would come back. We just didn't know when, but we honestly thought it would be at least a few years, rather than months. It was a big shock.
"The heart is a really s*** place to have cancer as it's pretty much untouchable. I had some surgery to remove some of the tumour, but it's already starting to grow back again."
Eleanor was given the option to undergo more intensive chemotherapy, but was warned it would be even more gruelling than before - with a small success rate.
After spending two weeks mulling it over, she made the difficult decision to turn down more treatment.
"I just decided that it wasn't worth it for me to become really sick again, lying in a bed all day every day, not being able to do the things that I want, when instead I could be making the most of the time I have left", she said.
"I've always had a bucket list and I had a trip to Europe planned which was cancelled when Covid hit."
Eleanor flew out to Singapore, before heading up to Newcastle, then onto Yorkshire before making the trip to Scotland.
From here she has travelled on to London, then will embark on a trip to Amsterdam before flying to Athens for a sailing holiday on the Mediterranean before rounding off the trip in Rome.
She said: "I had been to England when I was younger, but doing it as an adult is a different experience, and these are places that I've never been to before which is really exciting.
"It's something that I have always had in the back of my mind but since my diagnosis I have been doing much more spontaneous things, just because I haven't done them before.
"The bucket list is just an ever growing and spontaneous thing, and whatever is attainable, I will do it. They haven't been able to give me an accurate timeline, but I think I will be very lucky to get six months.
"When I told my parents I was terminal, the first thing they asked was 'what do you want to do with your time'. That's how the trip came about. My friend then set up the GoFundMe page and it was totally overwhelming what happened next. I turned my phone off on the first night and within an hour it had went to $30,000.
"There are a lot of donors that I don't even know which is really beautiful. I guess everyone at some point in their lives has been touched by this horrible disease."
To donate to the fundraiser and help Eleanor complete her bucket list, click here.
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