JO V CANCER INSIDE ONE WOMAN’S JOURNEY
Like a battery draining, Stuff journalist Jo Mckenzie-Mclean struggles to gather her thoughts into eloquent sentences. But as the energy leaves her, she is desperate to share her thoughts on the illness that threatens her life in a new podcast, writes Nad
In a tiny room, two friends chat about the parallels in their life … career, marriage, children and divorce. And then comes a pause to acknowledge the moment Stuff journalists Jo Mckenzie-Mclean and Colleen O’Hanlon lives diverged forever. They sit across a table, as they do in life. One facing their future, the other her mortality. Yet a resealable plastic bag is the only physical clue to what Mckenzie-Mclean faces. Bunches of ominous brown medicine bottles, with white prescription labels bulge from the clear bag. It’s surreal. Her eyes are clear and bright, her smile wide and her laugh ebullient. She’s engaging, her words warm with her trademark southern burr.
But looks are deceiving and as the pair endeavour to put down Mckenzie-Mclean’s thoughts on the illness that threatens her life, the energy leaves her.
Like a battery draining she struggles to gather her thoughts into eloquent sentences.
By day three of recording the podcast Jo v Cancer she takes frequent breaks to pop pills, and gather her scrambled thoughts. Leaving her hotel bed in Christchurch on the final morning takes extraordinary willpower, the kind that’s become Mckenzie-Mclean’s trademark since a doctor brutally relayed the news that she had cancer and “it didn’t look good” in January 2021.
The trauma of that moment and the way in which it was relayed has never left her and is in part one of the reasons she has decided to allow her cancer journey to be made public. True to the giver Mckenzie-Mclean’s friends say she is, and at a time when she feels most vulnerable, she has chosen to bare her raw unfiltered view of the ugly and often dark future she faces.
But it’s not just that she wants you to see. There’s the laughter – lots of laughter, as the pair recount the funnier parts of her story.
Inevitably though, mortality is never far from Mckenzie-Mclean’s thoughts. She knows she has to be realistic, she has to plan for the worst while hoping for the best. But how do you prepare children for their mother’s premature death, should it happen?
What words do cancer sufferers want to hear from friends and family? How could the mess around a diagnosis that delayed treatment and options be altered so that others don’t suffer in the same way?
Most of all she wants to normalise cancer conversations and break the stigma around a subject we hate to talk about…until we have it.
That stigma is something Mckenzie-Mclean knows all about after her brother, Kris died by suicide in 1999 following steroid abuse, which caused changes in his personality.
Just 20, Kris was living and working in Invercargill, while his sister finished her third year at University of Otago.
Working in the Bay of Islands as a barmaid at the Duke of Marlborough hotel over the summer uni holidays, Mckenzie-Mclean’s life altered forever when her stepdad called to tell her Kris was dead.
In the days, months and years following his death, there were many difficult, jilted conversations. People crossed the street to avoid talking to her. Not long after his death, a university counsellor said she must be embarrassed and ashamed about the way her brother died – to which she walked out.
In many ways Kris’ death has shaped the way in which Mckenzie-Mclean is tackling her own self-termed “death sentence”.
The subsequent feeling of having no control over life, and the profound impact grief had on her mentally, has been re-imagined and crowds her thoughts particularly when she imagines her children Morgan and Travis Chamberlain’s future.
“I know what it’s like to live with that huge grief, and I’m actually petrified of leaving that gap in my children’s lives…That loss does really scare me because I’ve been there.”
And while physically the side effects of cancer treatments have been cruel and not something that can be controlled, Mckenzie-Mclean wanted to record the podcast because it was something she could still choose to do.
More than that, although a cliché, she believes Kris’ death taught her not to take life for granted, and those that know her would agree.
From Southland Girls’ High School, Mckenzie-Mclean’s aptitude for English was evident, leading her to study English literature at university. But her brother’s death brought her back to Invercargill to be close to family, and opened a door to journalism.
Always a writer who kept meticulously detailed diaries, Mckenzie-Mclean’s talent quickly emerged as a sub-editor and advertising feature writer at The Southland Times. It wouldn’t be long before then editor Fred Tulett awarded Mckenzie-Mclean’s first big break, offering her the popular Uptown Girl column.
Tulett then encouraged the young cadet to train as a journalist, so she studied postgraduate journalism at University of Canterbury, then under Jim Tully.
Stints in Rangiora at a community paper for The Press followed before a move to the Christchurch newsroom where she did the graveyard shift of 5pm-1am for three years – specialising in crime writing.
The round gave Mckenzie-Mclean opportunities to work across the big Christchurch stories of the time, and gave her the chance to talk to families in the worst moments of their life. Giving victims justice was important and her ability to connect with those suffering from trauma and grief was encapsulated in an interview she had with a slain prostitute’s father.
For some time after the interview, the father would get Mckenzie-Mclean to write the memorial notice for his daughter as each anniversary approached.
Recently the father got in contact again when he heard of her diagnosis – something she feels deeply appreciative of.
Another man who was interviewed by MckenzieMclean after his wife died of a brain aneurysm, reached out to tell her how “respectful” she had been at the time and said his heart went out to her.
By her own admission she has always been more Bridget Jones “with my arse coming down the f...... fire pole” than Orla Guerin – a famed war correspondent – although she does now regret not getting the chance to work overseas.
Lately she has used her skills to share her story from diagnosis to treatment, writing poignant stories that have the capacity to make readers weep and chuckle along with her.
“I just love my job.”
She married, had children, divorced and moved to Cromwell, and was at the peak of her career and personal life when health problems began.
It was 2017 and Mckenzie-Mclean was training to run ultra-marathons around the Central Otago hills when she suffered a hip injury. Eventually she got back on track, winning a 20-week gym transformation competition, but a dog walk soon after resulted in a sore knee that wouldn’t heal.
Soon after she woke up with an aching hand, which the doctor diagnosed as a sprain. But over the next year both her knee and wrist continued to be painful, the former requiring steroid injections.
Then there were sporadic pains in different parts of her body.
By 2018 she started having unusual bowel movements and fatigue dogged her every movement. At the time as a single mum it was easy to brush her exhaustion away – after all she led a busy life.
But a gut instinct told Mckenzie-Mclean she should see her Clyde doctor about her bowel movements. There had been an uncle recently diagnosed with bowel cancer and a nana who had also passed away from the same condition.
Remarkably, neither a change in bowel movements nor direct family history of bowel issues raised the doctor’s suspicions. And even though she asked for a colonoscopy, medical notes would later reveal she was assessed as “not fitting the criteria”.
Still unwell, she went back in November 2018 and again demanded a colonoscopy. This time she was told that she didn’t fit the criteria because she didn’t have blood in her faeces.
Even when she began to have shortness of breath she was told she was fine.
She wondered if she was a hypochondriac. “I should have pushed harder, but I trusted the doctors,” she laments.
So she endured, and suffered endless trips to doctors who never indicated anything was amiss. That would not come until December 2019 when she starting feeling seriously ill.
“I know what it’s like to live with that huge grief, and I’m actually petrified of leaving that gap in my children’s lives… That loss does really scare me because I’ve been there.”
Over a six-week period what started as nausea and stomach cramps soon escalated to vomiting, severe pain and the inability to go to the toilet.
The defining moment in her diagnosis came when she went home from a barbecue at a friend’s place in terrible pain. She couldn’t stop vomiting and rang her parents at 1am in the morning to help.
Initially an on-call doctor told her over the phone that they couldn’t do much if it was a gastro bug but advised she went to Clyde hospital if it got worse.
An hour later she self-admitted, and was initially suspected of having gallstones. That diagnosis moved on to a case of simple constipation, and then it was explained as a reaction to arthritis drugs.
Given large amounts of laxatives and enemas she was sent home.
The following day, with no let up in the excruciating pain, she went back to her GP but was sent away with pills for stomach cramps.
It was then Mckenzie-Mclean enlisted her mother for back-up and after three days of shocking pain the pair struck it lucky with a young locum who immediately got on the phone to Dunedin hospital to demand a CT scan.
It was the first time in almost two years she felt she had been heard, but it would be two years too late.
Because of a breakdown in equipment Mckenzie-Mclean had to have the CT scan at Clyde hospital and was told by a doctor there that she was 99% the scan wouldn’t show anything abnormal.
But the next day, on her mother’s birthday, her world imploded when a doctor at the hospital told her she had cancer in her bowel and her liver, and “it didn’t look good”.
The doctor then promptly exited the room, leaving Mckenzie-Mclean and her mother spinning.
“I cried, I shook, I seethed…Don’t take away my hope as soon as you’ve delivered the news!”
It took her mum running after the doctor to find out she had a tumour blocking her bowel that needed immediate surgery, but she had to go back to Clyde Hospital until a bed became available.
The following day and with her partner Michael Hartstonge as support, she was operated on, having told her children she had a sore tummy…the truth was still too difficult to comprehend.
Now with a stage four diagnosis, meaning the cancer had spread beyond her bowel and into her liver, Mckenzie-Mclean is fighting for every day, and there is understandably anger at what might have been.
“I get frustrated with myself when I think back. God I should have pushed harder, changed doctors or done something because my story might have been a lot different.”
Since then Hartstonge has been a constant support to his partner, who he has known since childhood, although it wouldn’t be until 2018 that they became a couple.
But for Mckenzie-Mclean their relationship seemingly started a lot earlier after a primary school teacher discovered a love letter she had written to Hartstonge.
Mortified to be found out, she was then strapped for good measure – as was the norm at the time.
While she might have suffered for love, Mckenzie-Mclean also used the painful experience to her advantage – receiving an A+ when she wrote a story about it in secondary school.
Their strong friendship through many years has meant Hartstonge has been able to push Mckenzie-Mclean on days when she’s struggling to get out of bed.
He knows how far he can push the issue.
“I just try to keep her facing forward.” However, the impact of Mckenzie-Mclean’s diagnosis has been far-reaching.
Juggling his own children’s needs with his partner’s illness has meant Hartstonge has made sacrifices, including missing the chance to defend his national skeet shooting title for the third year because of Mckenzie-Mclean’s upcoming surgery.
The “not knowing” what the future holds also frustrates him. It’s difficult to make plans and hard to find time to get the support he needs to cope with such a busy timetable.
But behind it all is an impregnable love for the “strong independent” woman he admires, especially as she endures a staggering number of chemotherapy treatments cheerfully.
“We are fighting the fight and the goal is to beat it,” he says determinedly.
McKenzie-Mclean bravely posts regular Facebook updates on her treatment, be it good, bad or ugly. There’s lots of humour – something Hartstonge loves about his partner but like every cancer patient, she has had to face a cavalcade of information – some useful, some false.
From alternative treatments, to finding expensive drugs that might prolong her life, she shares every part of her story in the podcast.
There are tears and there are great shrieks of laughter and although proud of her “bolshie” daughter, mum Shari Mclean doesn’t yet know if she’s ready to listen.
It’s a weekday and Mclean has been feeding Mckenzie-Mclean’s chooks after a sleepless night. The day before her daughter found out she has a tumour on her ovary that will need to be removed.
It’s not the best start to the week. Hardest of all has been controlling her fear. She doesn’t allow herself to think of anything else other than her daughter’s prognosis is life.
“I’m not in denial. It’s day by day. I’m trying to be really, really positive.”
For Mclean that has meant focusing on helping. She has been an enormous support to MckenzieMclean and her children and is proud of how her daughter remains resilient even in the face of crippling pain.
After her son Kris passed away, Mclean vowed she would do everything to keep her surviving daughter safe and well.
But it’s Mckenzie-Mclean who is helping everyone around her cope with the very thing that threatens to take her away.
Through laughter, she still manages to uplift everyone around her, and even though her podcast deals with difficult topics, it’s also a privilege to get a candid insight of a battler who refuses to give up. And that’s something her mum is grateful for. “I used to get really frustrated with how bolshie she was, and now I’m really happy that she is.”
“I get frustrated with myself when I think back. God I should have pushed harder, changed doctors or done something because my story might have been a lot different.”