Taranaki dad dies of brain tumour one week after marrying partner
A Taranaki father who appealed for financial help after being diagnosed with a brain tumour has died.
Rikki Tako, 32, died on March 26, a week to the day after he and his partner, Nykala Garrett, were married at a beach wedding near New Plymouth.
Yesterday, Garrett said she was happy for a story to be written about her partner but did not want to comment.
Last month, Garrett said she had given up her job as a nurse at Taranaki Base Hospital after Tako’s diagnosis late last year.
With a blended family of five and rent of $700 a week, the couple went public in early March about the financial hardship they were in. At the time they said Tako could have just weeks or months to live.
More than $40,000 was donated to the family through a Givealittle page set up to “help ease the financial burden for this young family”.
Garrett said the donations had left her speechless.
“I just wasn’t expecting it to blow up as well as it did. The generosity has been insane. Just with how hard the economy has been hit at the moment, it’s so amazing how generous people still are.”
She said part of the money would be used to pay for Tako’s funeral, an event they had already planned and estimated would cost at least $15,000.
Previously Garrett had been worried she would have to take a loan to pay for the funeral. “I would have been paying it off for the rest of my life.”
Tako’s death comes less than four months after he suffered a head injury in a workplace accident.
While he was recovering at home he began experiencing seizures, memory loss, and headaches. Tests showed Tako had a fast-growing and aggressive cancer known as a brain stem glioblastoma.
Glioblastoma can cause headaches, a loss of balance, weakness on one side of the face and difficulty walking. It grows quickly, destroying healthy tissue as it does. It can be treated but it cannot be cured. The tumour was pre-existing, but it was believed the workplace accident caused the cell dysfunction that led to its rapid growth. Had that not happened, it was likely that the tumour would not have been a problem for another 20 or 30 years.
When news of the couple’s plight was revealed in the Taranaki Daily News, people working in the wedding industry offered their services for free and the couple were able to be married.
On Friday, March 15, when that story about the impending wedding was published, Garrett was summoned to a meeting with the Ministry of Social Development, at which she was told their benefits were to be adjusted to reflect that they were in a relationship.
Garrett said she was also warned by the ministry that the donated money could be considered an asset once it was paid to them, meaning some parts of their benefits would have been cut or reduced.