Surviving chemo
‘I learnt to treat cancer as a job’
Sitting down at a busy, Wellington central cafe, sipping her cappuccino, Andrea Fairbairn waves out to me.
Her warm smile and marigold top are a calming change of pace from a conveyor belt of suits, shooting through for their afternoon caffeine fix.
Fairbairn’s here to tell me about a part of her life she got to ‘‘do over’’.
One of those times you look back on and think, ‘‘had I only known what I know now’’.
Only, in Fairbairn’s case, it wasn’t a romantic or business failure, it was when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, for the second time.
When Fairbairn was first told on her 39th birthday that she had cancer, she didn’t really take it seriously.
She was too busy with work, managing a Papua New Guinea aid programme at the Department of Foreign Affairs.
She had no family history, did not smoke or drink, and was only tested because her GP casually suggested a breast check when she was there for a different reason.
Fairbairn, 48, found out she had aggressive, grade three cancer, and underwent surgery to have the lump and underarm lymph nodes removed.
The year that followed was characterised by chemotherapy sessions, radiation, and driving to Palmerston North to receive rounds of the antibody drug Herceptin, which at the time was not publicly funded.
‘‘It was a really hard time. I remember my partner said to me, ‘when will we go back to how it was before?’ And I thought, I have no idea.
‘‘I lost all my hair and felt sick for most of that six months of chemo. I lost a lot of weight, and for some reason I was trying to work as well.’’
There was nobody in Fairbairn’s life who she could talk to who had been through breast cancer before.
There were counsellors, information filled with medical terms, helpful oncology district nurses, and friends she had made who were going through it at the same time.
But Fairbairn wished she had someone to tell her realistically what it was going to be like.
A few years later, Fairbairn was cancer-free.
‘‘My hair grew back, I was working full time and about to go on a posting with work to Papua New Guinea and I remember feeling really good, like this didn’t even happen.’’
At her four-year checkup, Fairbairn never expected the doctor to utter the words: ’’We’ve found something.’’
‘‘I felt so well and I just wanted to get on with my life.
‘‘But I got this feeling inside of me that part of this cancer was about helping others, and really sharing all the things that I learnt the hard way so other people didn’t have to, and I just recorded everything.’’
Fairbairn kept a blog throughout her mastectomy, reconstruction and second round of chemo.
She wrote down whar helped her, from having warm drinks before chemo to prepare her veins, to closing her eyes and imagining she was walking along a beach when she was actually inside a CT scan.
She jotted down ways to keep
hydrated, such as eating jelly, when the chemo had made water taste like rust.
She also wrote about her health taking priority this time.
‘‘I learnt to treat cancer as job, your job is to survive and heal the cancer and other things fit into that, not the other way around.’’
Fairbairn has since published her writings in a book, Chemo and Back Again.
A mix of bullet pointed tips, diary entries, and tranquil photographs, the book is an honest account of a breast cancer journey from diagnosis to treatment, recovery, and post-recovery.
Having just had her five-year clearance, Fairbairn is back working full time and feeling good.
There is no way to ‘‘prepare’’ yourself for chemo, and people need to take their own path, Fairbairn says. But she hopes her findings might make the journey easier for others.
Purchase or sponsor a book at thejoyagency.org.