It cost around $250,000 to save my daughter’s life. That’s just the hospital bills. It doesn’t include psychiatric and counselling expenses, fuel costs to drive the 300km round trip three times a week from the South Coast of NSW to Sydney to visit her while she was in hospital, the accommodation costs for when I was too tired to drive home, or the pharmaceutical accounts every month.

Keeli Cambourne and her daughter Molly.

When Molly was eventually diagnosed with an eating disorder, I was under the misapprehension that we’d be able to fix the problem quickly and easily.

But within two weeks of her diagnosis I had tapped into the mortgage to pay $20,000 up front for the first four-week private hospital stay. Before she was admitted, I had to prove that I had the funds to cover the treatment.

We couldn’t wait for a public hospital bed to be made available. I was terrified, my daughter was dying, and I would have sold the house and everything I owned if I had too.