Three women take up
1000km
challenge
T
hree women have travelled many extra miles during September to raise funds for ovarian cancer awareness and research during Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month. Amanda Mitchell, Carmen Lintsen and Laura Carleton set a goal of cycling, running and walking a total of 1,000 kilometres to support Step Up for Ovarian Cancer in September. The trio were inspired to do the challenge by their friend Kate Spackman who was diagnosed with cancer in November 2019. Kate had returned from her son’s wedding in Columbia in August and realised something was wrong. “I went skiing and was really tired. I’d been doing Pilates for 16 years but had no energy, my arm was sore and my tennis coach noticed something
wrong with the way I was holding my racket,” Kate said. “I had always been active, enjoying cycling, golf, tennis, tramping and sailing, I knew my body and I knew something wasn’t right.” When Kate got an intense pain in her abdomen she marked where it was with a pen and went to her doctor. After a transvaginal ultrasound, a five centimetre tumour was found in her left fallopian tube directly under the pen mark. She had surgery which included a hysterectomy and paraaortic nodal dissection and was diagnosed with stage 3 high-grade serious ovarian cancer. In January 2020 she started six cycles of chemotherapy with carboplatin and paclitaxel every three weeks. Kate’s surgery was at Christ-
18 Walking New Zealand, issue no 284 - 2021
High Achiever
church Women’s Hospital but health insurance enabled her to have chemotherapy at St George’s Cancer Care Centre. There she was offered help from a dietician, physiotherapist and psychologist. “I’d encourage anyone going through this to see someone like a psychologist. It helped me understand it was normal to feel what I was feeling, the sadness, grief and anxiety.” Within days Kate began to get side effects. “Chemo is brutal. I lost all my hair, including my eye brows and eye lashes. It hurt, like someone was pulling each hair out because the follicles were very sensitive. Nerve endings in my feet and hands were affected, causing numbness and my jaw was really painful, I mostly ate soup so I didn’t have to chew, and my joints were really painful. Kate recovered from the chemotherapy but earlier this year she became very tired, and was feeling something wasn’t right when she found a lump on her pelvis. A scan showed a cancerous lymph node on her pelvis. After surgery her doctors recommended another six rounds of chemotherapy - this time carboplatin on its own, starting in April. A nurse recommended soaking in a warm bath to ease the joint pain, so in between treatments Kate would retreat to her second home in Wanaka which has a bath, unlike her Christchurch home. “The warm water really does help” says Kate. Her sixth and final chemotherapy session was scheduled for mid August and Kate felt it was déjà vu when lockdown was announced because the country was locked down before she had completed her treatment last year. Her daughter
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