Thanks for all the cancer support: Now sit still
JANET Mazenier admitted to being unable to stomach breakfast yesterday, only hours before she was having her hair shaved off. But she knows that fear and trepidation was nothing compared to what her brother David Downs went through when he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lymphoma.
She helped her brother and his family through cancer, and he repaid the favour yesterday by shaving off her shoulderlength hair.
But the pair approached it with the same humour and optimism that got the Stuff columnist through pioneering and life-saving cancer treatment in the United States in 2017.
‘‘This was sibling revenge,’’ Downs quipped. ‘‘I remember Mum leaving the kitchen and Janet and I got in a food fight and she rubbed ice-cream in my hair. I was only about six.’’
‘‘Oh you were a brat,’’ she retorts, now the shears have been safely turned off and her hair sits on the shop floor.
‘‘Actually, Janet is incredible,’’ Downs says. ‘‘She moved in and looked after our children while we were in the States, made many meals and many cups of tea – it was really special. Janet dropped out of university to help us.’’
It was Downs’ wife Katherine – who has also shaved her head for Leukaemia & Blood Cancer New Zealand, who suggested Mazenier sign up, after a series of disastrous hair-dyeing sessions.
‘‘It’s only hair, why not,’’ said Mazenier. Then her husband John signed up too and together they have raised almost $10,000 to fund the search for a cure and provide invaluable support for patients and their families. Every day, seven Kiwis will discover they have a blood cancer such as leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma – that is one person every four hours.
More than 10 people had their heads shaved at Farmers, Sylvia Park, yesterday – among them Olivia Long, 12, whose grandfathers both passed away from cancer, and Jacqui Lovett who had also lost wha¯ nau to the disease, Len Thomson whose wife is now three years cancerfree, and Reean Renay, who did it to mark her 16th birthday.
Downs shared with the crowd that he had overcome cancer, and it was sharing during his treatment that helped him heal, he says.
He wrote a regular column for Stuff –‘‘A Mild Touch of the Cancer’’ – and says that, too, helped save his life.
To donate to their Leukaemia & Blood Cancer fundraising go to: https://shaveforacure.co.nz/ janet-mazenier