Mother’s festive wish granted
News
As she held her daughters in a tight hug, terminally ill Emily Stein was grateful to be home.
The 32-year-old, who has incurable stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, was rushed to Wellington Hospital for brain surgery shortly before Christmas.
But the Blenheim mother of two got her dearest wish for the holiday season, after being discharged from hospice care on Christmas Eve to be with her husband and two young daughters.
Just days earlier, she had discovered that the Government’s drug-buying bureau, Pharmac, would not be funding two medicines for advanced breast cancer sufferers – medicines she hoped would prolong her life. The family are left trying to raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed for treatment, including further gamma knife radiosurgery, a form of radiation therapy.
Stein said she had planned to spend part of the holidays on the beach at Waihi in the Bay of Plenty with daughters Ada, 5, and Mabel, 2, and husband Chris McMurtrie. Instead, she was ‘‘grateful’’ to be resting at home. ‘‘It can all change so quickly.’’
Medicines Ibrance and Kadcyla could have given her more time with her daughters, Stein said. ‘‘I found out that, unfortunately, there is progression in my brain. This means the further treatment I need are the pricey ones. The non-funded drug, Kadcyla, which is capped at $60,000. But this does not include any private oncology treatment costs, so likely to be closer to $100,000.
‘‘The other potential option is more gamma knife treatment. Approximately $30,000 each treatment. So now we are again playing the waiting game for scans, reviews and making new treatment plans,’’ she said.
Friend Kim Davis kept people up to date on Stein’s progress, as she was too sick to post updates herself. Severe headaches had seen Stein on steroids before surgeons put a shunt in her brain to relieve the fluid pressure.
Davis said her friend had needed hospice help to manage the pain.
Stein was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2016, at just 30 years old. She began treatment when her youngest daughter, Mabel, was four weeks old.
The ‘‘grindingly slow’’ pace of Pharmac’s decision processes has been branded a ‘‘national disgrace’’ by Breast Cancer Aotearoa Coalition. Fellow funding campaigner Mike Mulholland, whose wife Wiki also has stage 4 breast cancer, said there were women who were ‘‘consigned to dying earlier’’ as a result of the setback.
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