Mum, 45, given eight weeks to live following stomach ache
Christchurch mother Naomi Argyle, 45, was told she had weeks to live just days after going to the doctor with a pain in her stomach.
Argyle went for a checkup after reading a news story on March 4 about another Christchurch woman, Jade Blackman, who’d gone to the doctor with a niggling stomach pain. She died eight weeks after learning she had bowel cancer. In that story, the oncologist had told Blackman’s mother the disease was “ripping through” young outwardly fit and healthy people.
It was “surreal and shocking” when doctors told Argyle she was also dying from bowel cancer, and could have just eight weeks left. “One of my doctors said it was alarming the amount of younger people that were not finding out it was too late,” she said.
“The speed at which it happened was hard to take in. How can this be? This should not be happening in this country that we have this terrible killer disease. It’s striking down previously healthy young people, who have had nothing in their lifestyle such as drinking, smoking or bad diet to cause it. There needs to be urgency to save lives,” she said. I feel like I have to shout it from the rooftops, making noise so that if just one other person like me will go and get checked, and jump up and down if you have symptoms to get tests.”
Before going to the doctor, Argyle had stomach ache off and on, but never dreamed it was anything serious.
“It takes so long to get a doctor’s appointment, and expensive, I was busy at work and with the kids, but mostly I hadn’t thought I needed it,” she said.
She made the appointment on March 8, and the doctor sent her to Christchurch Hospital for tests including a scan, then biopsy. Just days later she learned she had stage-four bowel cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes, liver and lungs, and was “incurable”.
Like Blackman, Argyle had no symptoms such as change in bowel movements, passing blood, weight loss or fatigue. As a busy working mum of 11 and 13-year-old girls, “I wouldn’t think it strange if I was tired.”
Talking to Stuff at Easter Weekend, still in Christchurch Hospital, she was calm and matter of fact about the diagnosis. Sharing the news with others and seeing their shock and pain was worse than dealing with the diagnosis itself, she said. “Telling the girls was the worst thing I have ever done in my life.”
She’s no longer with the girl’s father, Scott Ashworth, but said they still have a great bond and are handling it together. He set up a Givealittle fund for their daughters.
Press journalist Jo McKenzie-McLean was just 45 when she died of bowel cancer last July. She devoted much of her last year of life to recording a podcast, Jo v Cancer, to reduce stigma and encourage discussion.
In McKenzie McClean’s case it took two years of battling to get a diagnosis. Despite irregular bowel movements, and an uncle and grandmother who had bowel cancer, she was told three times she did not meet the criteria for a colonoscopy.
According to Bowel Cancer NZ, which receives no government help, three Kiwis die from it each day – the second-highest cause of cancer death. One in 10 will be under 50.