Real-life reads
Cancer’s financially crippling this poor mum; Cosy Kiwis: “Living tiny is awesome”
Barely two months ago, Cheryl Carr couldn’t put a foot on the ground without an excruciating pain shooting up her leg. In crippling agony, the mum-oftwo staggered the few steps to her bathroom before collapsing back onto her bed.
With cancer lodged in her spine for the past seven years, the terrible side effects of drugs keeping the killer disease at bay has radically changed the life of the East Auckland mum, who less than a decade ago ran a construction company.
Now the exhausting toll on her health leaves her fatigued, compounded by the financial strain she carries raising a schoolaged child on a disability benefit, which leaves her struggling to make ends meet.
Her heartbreaking plight has spurred generous Kiwis to reach into their wallets and donate to a givealittle page to help ease the burden for a woman who has thought nothing of donating her time to help others, even when battling the worst pain imaginable.
“It’s unbelievable,” she shares. “I get emotional when I think about it. I am seven years down the track of stage-four cancer. There are some days that I feel lonely and to have all these people who are complete strangers feel like they would like to donate is pretty amazing.”
Cheryl, 49, can’t remember the last time she wore fashion from a high-street store. It’s a luxury she hasn’t been able to afford in years.
“I have not felt nice brandnew clothes for a very long time – and Grace looked so beautiful,” beams Cheryl, treasuring the opportunity to be glammed up and share a beautiful photo shoot with her 12-year-old daughter.
“I don’t want people to think we live like this in these beautiful clothes all the time. We go to secondhand shops and even then it’s a tight budget.
“I want to thank Woman’s Day for the chance to spend a beautiful day getting dressed up and having memorable photographs taken that we will have for the years to come. Those photos might be the last my kids have of me. We don’t know when the cancer is going to come back and we don’t know how severe it will be.”
The softly-spoken woman, who is also mum to Samuel, 23, says she still remembers the day she discovered the lump on her left breast when her daughter was just a toddler.
“Cancer definitely wasn’t on my radar in the slightest,” she recalls. “I was 38 years old and had an itchy rash. I just thought there was a bug in my bra, went to scratch it and felt the lump.
“I was going to ignore it, but three days later I came down with a heavy flu and went to the doctor. He checked it out and said, ‘Actually, there are two lumps and I think it’s cancer.’
“It turned out that not only were there two lumps, but it had spread into the lymph nodes in my arm. I had a mastectomy and all the nodes were removed.”
Despite a period of remission, everything was cruelly reversed when the cancer reappeared in her spine seven years ago. More surgery followed, with Cheryl and Grace moving from Australia to the South Island to recuperate near her mum. Tragically, her mother was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and died six months later.
After moving to Auckland’s warmer climate to help ease her chronic pain, Cheryl says the plan is to keep tracking the cancer and changing drugs as they stop working, but mindful “at some point it might be the end of the road”.
But she wants to highlight how depending on a disability benefit is not enough to live on, and she’s challenging politicians to review the out-of-date budget blueprint.
“You have to go back and look at the formulas,” she pleads. “I’ve gone through all the figures. The formula, especially people with children, is wrong and has not kept up with the times.”
Cheryl says there has been so much her daughter – who has cooked meals and looked after her mum since she was six years old – has missed out on because she was only left with $23 a week to clothe and feed
her after rent and bills were paid.
“She’s taken on far more than any child should have to,” confesses Cheryl. “Grace loves to sing. Her most favourite thing is rock climbing. If I could provide for her like I used to be able to she would be rock climbing every week, and she would have music lessons.”
Instead, Cheryl has relied on the kindness of friends to offer holidays, something she finds embarrassing.
But now she is graciously accepting the generosity of strangers to help make a difference to her pain and suffering.
“It’s going to be mind-blowing,” she smiles. “It means that the small disability benefit I do get, I can continue to use that for the basics for Grace and with this money I’ll be able to get treatment for myself to help with my pain.
“My game plan is still to get to 80. I’ve worked out that if the drugs need to be changed every five years, then it’s only another six lot of times that the drugs have to be taken. I’ve got to hold out hope and there’s always new drugs coming out.”