Martin founded KLM Solicitors back in 2015 and now has four offices in Queensland, including one in Brisbane CBD, and 23 staff.

While expansions down to Sydney and Melbourne were in her plans a couple of years ago, over the last 12 to 18 months, Martin’s personal circumstances caused her to “re-evaluate and reflect on the goals of the business” and what she wants for the future.

After meeting and marrying in 2019, Martin’s husband and her children’s stepfather was diagnosed with cancer last year.

“He was a tremendous partner and stepfather. Unfortunately, in early 2023, we noticed a small lump in the side of his neck, which grew over the course of about a month. You could see it was in his lymph nodes. And I eventually convinced him to go to the doctor because I, at the time, thought, ‘Oh, it’s tonsillitis, and you need to get some antibiotics. This is not clearing up.’ And it turns out that it wasn’t tonsillitis. The lumps in his lymph nodes were, in fact, secondary tonsil cancer that had spread to his lymphatic system,” she said.

“And I was very fortunate to have a good friend who was an ear, nose and throat surgeon here in Brisbane who kind of rushed him through the testing process. So, we knew fairly early on that it was tonsil cancer. What we didn’t know was how far it had progressed. You’d be surprised to know that tonsil cancer is about the fifth-most diagnosed cancer amongst young men in the world at the moment, especially the type in which Mike was diagnosed with, which is hpv positive tonsil cancer.”

While this type of cancer is, in most cases, very treatable, Martin’s husband had stage-four cancer, with tumours all over his body.

“His PET scan lit up like a Christmas tree. It was all through his spine, his lungs, his liver, all through his bones, and, obviously, in his lymphatic system and his tonsils. And we started this really heavy chemo and immunotherapy regime back in, at the end of May last year. The first nine weeks of treatment showed great promise, and we actually got a second PET scan at 10 weeks, which showed a 70 per cent reduction in the cancer in his body. It was incredible.

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“Unfortunately, he had a car accident in about September last year. Somebody went up the back of him, and he started getting quite severe back pain. And we obviously let his doctors know, and they did a CT scan, and it turned out that the cancer had progressed again quite significantly in his spine, and he had got a pathological fracture in one of his vertebrae, which was causing the pain,” she said.

“And what they were concerned about was that the tumour was very close to his spinal cord, so they started some quite significant radiation. But as a result of that, we were told very quickly that the cancer was what they call chemorefractory, which meant it wasn’t responding to chemotherapy, and it had spread quite significantly throughout his body again. And in fact, it had come back even worse than it had at the beginning.”

Martin’s husband died in March, after palliative chemo treatments and five weeks of no treatment, just after his 50th birthday. Sixteen months on from the diagnosis, Martin said that “it’s been a journey”.

“It’s a day-by-day process, but I think if you have to go through anything like this, whether it be a cancer diagnosis or the unexpected death of a loved one or illness, or even divorce, or an accident or anything that’s causing you to feel trauma affected, the first thing that you need to do is reach out for help. We have an incredibly collegiate group of family and criminal lawyers up here in Brisbane. And I’m sure every city and state of Australia has their own collegiate or group that they can talk to,” she added.

“Reach out, speak to your peers, speak to your colleagues, because there are always people who’ll be offering to help you and to the people who want to offer help the most. The best help that you can give is practical help. Making meals, or just helping pick-ups, or putting the laundry on or emptying the bin, they were the kind of things that changed my life when all of this stuff was happening, because we spent the last five or six months in hospital, really, and just having people around me, friends, family and colleagues, that just picked up where I couldn’t.

“I see a clinical psychologist once a week, and I probably will do that not even just to deal with my grief but to deal with the vicarious trauma that I’m exposed to every day in family and criminal law. And I can’t stress enough how helpful and beneficial that is because we don’t realise about the overproduction of cortisol in our bodies and the fact that stress responses are so dangerous, especially to people in our profession.”

Asking for help, particularly when working in a high-stress environment and dealing with personal trauma, can be massively beneficial – and Martin encouraged anyone dealing with similar circumstances to reach out if they need help.

“Everybody has their own way of dealing with grief and loss, but there are always people out there that can help you. And if it’s not colleagues or friends or family, there’s a tremendous amount of support out there for people going through what I went through. It was as simple as reaching out to the Law Society and saying, ‘Hey, I’m not going to be able to get my CPD points done this year. I just don’t have time.’ And they’ll listen to what’s going on with you, and they’ll take steps to help you as best they can,” she said.

“So, make sure that you’re asking; don’t feel bad about asking because you never know when this kind of thing might happen. I hope it never happens to anyone else. I really do. But it will. And I just want to make sure I’ve got my story out there and to let people know that they can always reach out to me if they’re going through similar circumstances as well.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Kelli Martin, click below: