Eva’s fight: ‘I don’t have a lot of time’
It’s February 4, 2015, and Eva McGauley, 15, who has spent most of her teenage years helping others, is told that it’s not glandular fever that caused her neck to swell. It’s cancer. Now it’s November, 2015 and she is told the cancer has spread to her hip and her chest. She’s dying.
Yesterday afternoon McGauley, now 16 and sitting in Midland Park on Lambton Quay, was not bitter or angry: she was busy.
The former Wellington High School student is running a national campaign to help survivors of sexual violence, an ‘‘epidemic’’ that affects one in three New Zealand women, she said.
She wants to raise $50,000 for women and children survivors, and is lobbying to create a 24/7 online service, where teens who are sexually assaulted can get support.
When McGauley found out she was dying she felt ‘‘all the usual emotions’’ of loss and how it would affect loved ones. But McGauley had ideas to share, too.
‘‘I had always assumed that I was going to do quite a lot of stuff to help people in my life. And suddenly I said ‘oh crap, I don’t have a lot of time’. So I guess I started working from that moment.’’
McGauley had worked with Wellington Rape Crisis since she was 14.
‘‘I had always been aware, talking to friends who had been sexually assaulted, they wouldn’t go to proper counsellors, there were all their issues of lying to their parents, how they would get there, and money.’’
Now she is juggling her campaign with groundbreaking t-cell therapy to prolong her life.
She said ‘‘of course’’ she had felt some anger about her diagnosis, but not as much as people assumed.
McGauley said she still thought about the future - but ‘‘not in an imagining-going-to-university kind of way’’.
‘‘Maybe not as far ahead as most people, but even if I’m not actually in the future, I still imagine - hopefully - a better, safer kind of place.’’
McGauley has linked with Auckland not-for-profit group HELP, which provides support for sexual abuse survivors.
People can search ‘‘Eva’s wish’’ on the Givealittle website to find out more and donate to HELP.
Eva has published a video on HELP’s website.