The two-time Supercars champion and NASCAR winner has spent the past two years in a harrowing battle with colorectal cancer that ultimately led to a full liver transplant to save his life.
He has recently ticked over a year since the transplant and well past the initial prognosis of how long he could survive.
That’s not to say the battle has been won, however Ambrose is currently healthy, happy and committed to spreading the word about organ donation, something he owes his life to.
That was the message at Friday night’s Pirtek Legends Night where Ambrose, the latest inductee, went public with his cancer ordeal for the first time.
“My diagnosis came really quickly and suddenly and very much unexpectedly,” said Ambrose, recounting the discovery of the cancer in mid-2023.
“I was digging a trench in my backyard and I had a sore shoulder. I didn’t think much of it. I’d just done the Bathurst 6 Hour with George Miedecke and his dad. I felt a bit tired, I was struggling to exercise, but you know, I was just getting old.
“I went to the doctor for a sore shoulder and within 12 hours I was diagnosed with stage four colorectal cancer. They called it terminal at the time.”
The sore shoulder was from inflammation in Ambrose’s liver, where the cancer had spread.
“We caught it late, because there were no symptoms, no signs. And it had spread,” said Ambrose.
“The only place to go and deal with this is actually to start doing cancer treatment with chemotherapy, to try to hold it back. They deemed it at the time inoperable, and sort of like, we just have to manage this.”
As grim as the initial diagnosis was, when an aggressive chemotherapy program started to show signs of progress the window for a miracle started to open.
“I’m one of the lucky ones, I guess, that the chemotherapy worked hard and opened a window for a couple of surgeries to try to get in front of it,” he said.
“We were opened up to a possibility, subject to a lot of criteria, to do a [liver] transplant.”
Ambrose was the third person in Australia to have a liver transplant under those conditions. And even the life-saving surgery came at a great cost to both him and his family.
Having initially been diagnosed while living in his native Tasmania, Ambrose was forced to relocate to Sydney to wait to see if a suitable organ became available.
That agonising wait included needing to have his phone on him at all times so that as soon as the call came, and be within an hour of the hospital.
Even the relocation was a tough scenario for the Ambrose family, who had to leave their school-age daughter Adelaide in Launceston to finish her studies.
Eventually the call came and Ambrose received the new liver that has saved his life.
The family aspect is one that Ambrose is both exceptionally grateful for, while also carrying guilt for putting those closest to him through such a horrific ordeal.
“I couldn’t be here without my wife and my kids and my dad and everybody,” he said. “It’s just incredible. You need that around you to get through something like that
“It was awful for me to think [my kids] might not see a good dad again.”
Family has been a big part of Ambrose’s recovery as well, particularly the racing program, which includes Trans Am and Formula Ford, that is ultimately geared around his daughter Tabitha.
That has given him focus and purpose, as has a commitment to spread the word about the importance of organ donation.
While Motorsport Ministries is the underpinning charity of the Pirtek Legends Night, the first $10,000 of proceeds from last night’s auction have gone to Donate Life.
“I’ve found a lot of inner peace, and I’ve found a lot of inner self, because you go through a huge journey,” said Ambrose.
“But that’s just my story; everyone’s got their own story out there.
“That’s one thing I’ve realised, everybody’s got stories to tell. I’m not special. I’m not unique. I’m just another person that’s going through something.
“We’ve done it tough. Everything is going great. We don’t know what’s [happening] tomorrow, but we’re living every day.
“My life was saved by the grace of somebody else.”
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