Wow winner’s cancer challenge
DESIGNER Claire Prebble has been told by doctors there is no cure for the aggressive melanoma in her leg – not surgery, not radiation, not chemotherapy.
But the 29-year-old Wellingtonian is determined to keep fighting – and she has a track record of achieving what she sets her mind to.
At the age of just 18, she became the youngest winner of the supreme World of Wearable-Art prize, which helped secure her a job at Weta Workshop. There she rose to become head of the costume department, designing costumes, weapons and jewellery for films from Avatar to Prince Caspian .
But she has been unable to return to her dream job since August, and last week she was given the heartbreaking news that the cancer had spread. There were no options for a cure.
‘‘The hardest part was telling my friends and family as I had prepared myself for all these different outcomes,’’ she said yesterday.
‘‘Quite often people say they don’t know what they would do if they were confronted with a decision like this, and it’s quite true. You really just don’t know until you have to.’’
She has been told more surgery and radiotherapy could prolong her life, but cost Prebble her fertility. But she is determined that, before facing that choice, she will travel to a clinic in Germany for a month of intensive treatments, including hyperthermia – in which she is exposed to high temperatures to damage and kill cancer cells – as well as intravenous doses of ozone and vitamin C.
‘‘Usually they have a waiting list of up to nine months but, because of the seriousness of my situation, they will take me in April. [The doctors in Wellington] see the melanoma as being the thing that ends my life. I don’t see that.’’
She has so far raised almost $43,000 to fund the treatment in Germany, and is trying to raise a total of $80,000 through the Givealittle website.
Prebble has already had a large section of her leg removed around the cancerous growth, as well as 11 lymph nodes.
‘‘Learning to walk again after all this was probably the most painful experience of my life. I had a zimmer frame to start with then I was on crutches for quite a while. I was completely reliant on other people to help me with everything. This made quite a change for me, as I am used to being so independent.’’
Friends have commented on the unfairness of her diagnosis at such a young age, but Prebble does not see it that way. ‘‘Along with the hard times have come the blessings of realising what is truly important to me,’’ she said.