Christina's Story

In October 2020, Christina was living what she described as a normal, happy, active family life; working as a doctor in Waikato, with 2 kids at school and busy family weekends. Christina had emigrated with her family from Scotland in 2017. “With COVID-19 hitting the world, we would look at family back in the UK having a hard time and think “poor them”.

Then Christina discovered she had cancer. On their first day in a new home, she scratched an itch on her chest, felt a lump and the roller coaster of a breast cancer diagnosis began.

Understandably there were immediate ripple effects on Christina’s family. Her children, then aged 15 and 11, were understandably shocked. When Christina’s head was shaved, her son said “you don’t have to do this Mum”, Christina tells how at that moment her heart broke for him.

It has taken 18 months from this point to today, when Christina once again describes her life and that of her family as ‘normal’. Support from her Pinc & Steel physiotherapist, Megan Drummond, helped her recover from not only the physical, but the emotional and psychological challenges that a cancer diagnosis and treatment brings. “Megan was brilliant – compassionate, supportive, motivating and incredibly kind”.

After finding the lump, Christina was quickly diagnosed with an aggressive carcinoma of the breast. She has subsequently undergone a lumpectomy, node biopsy and mastectomy. Due to a pre-existing health condition, Christina’s management of a breast reconstruction was complicated. She underwent a TRAM flap reconstruction, meaning that tissue from her abdomen was used to reform her breast. The recovery from this was arduous.

It took 6 weeks for Christina to be able to stand upright and walk any distance. Just sitting up in bed was difficult. She underwent six months of chemotherapy, describing her experience of chemotherapy as like having the worst type of flu. Christina shares; “You just want to stop. You know that it gets progressively harder and harder to tolerate with each round and psychologically your head wants to explode”. While it felt like purgatory for the six months of treatment, she knew that she had to keep going for her kids. She took it one day at a time.

Christina describes the raft of side effects she experienced from treatment; arm movement loss, nerve pain and strength deficits – post surgery she couldn’t open a jar - fatigue, brain fog, memory loss, weight gain due to steroid treatment, cording and lymphoedema all manifested at various times. Osteopenia, bone density loss, necessitates ongoing weight bearing exercise for her bone health.

Despite this, during chemotherapy Christina walked everyday; she tells us how much better it made her feel. Exercising was the key to her recovery. And especially exercising with people. “Pinc and Steel Next Steps was so much fun, there was so much camaraderie in the room”.

During Lockdown, these Next Steps classes moved online. Christina improvised, continuing to work out from her garage, using a block of horse feed in place of a step! She is now fit, has returned to work as a GP, regularly attends her long-standing Pilates classes, walks daily and has improved fitness through self-determination and Megan’s encouragement to progress through harder workloads.

“The financial impact of cancer is a huge blow to anyone”. As a GP Christina describes how many of her patients would struggle to pay for the essential recovery care she received if it wasn’t for the funding provided by Dry July and PINC & STEEL.

By participating in Dry July and raising funds, you'll be helping people like Christina access Pinc & Steel NZ's incredible cancer rehabilitation programmes across New Zealand. Sign up now!