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Suffering pain so excruciating she would sometimes cry herself to sleep at night, Janine Searle spent six months traipsing to countless appointments with medical professionals trying to find out why her shoulder hurt so much.
It wasn’t until a bone sample was finally taken and sent off for testing – by doctors in three different countries – that she received the diagnosis she’d spent so long dreading.
“I clearly remember that day,” Janine, 24, solemnly tells Woman’s Day. “I had my dad and my aunty with me, as well as a whole bunch of other doctors in that room.
“When they told me, it went all silent. I paused for a bit and then started crying. All I could think was, ‘I’m so young. How can it be cancer?'”
Janine, then aged 20 and a keen ballet dancer all through her teenage years, had moved from Blenheim to Christchurch to study tourism. She dreamed of travelling, but it was on her first day in her new career in the travel industry when she felt the pain in her shoulder for the first time.
Janine (centre front) was determined to get back on her feet and rejoin her dance group.
Doctors diagnosed a muscle injury and sent Janine to physiotherapy and occupational therapy. But the pain didn’t go away with treatment or medication. In fact, it got worse.
“Night-time was probably the worst pain. One night, I went straight to A&E and saw a completely different doctor. He could see that I was in a lot of pain and he was probably the only one who took me seriously out of all of the doctors I saw.”
When the GP learned Janine hadn’t had her shoulder scanned in the three months since she had first seen a doctor for the pain, he immediately referred her for an x-ray and an ultrasound. Her results came back the same day.
“He told me he could see some sort of lump forming,” she recalls. “Of course, he mentioned the possibility of cancer. You could see that my bone was thinning – that was one of the signs that something was going on in there.
“I remember just crying and freaking out. What? A lump in my shoulder? I was told it was a muscle injury!”
Samples of her bone were sent to Australia, then the US, and it wasn’t until six months since she had first felt pain in her shoulder that she was diagnosed with a rare form of osteosarcoma bone cancer.
Janine underwent surgery to remove the cancerous tissue, surgeons taking her right humerus and rotator cuff along with it. Nine months of chemotherapy followed, an experience Janine does not relish reliving.
After surgery, Janine endured nine months of chemo.
“It took such a toll on my body,” she tells. “Going to treatment was like going to work every day. And then I was supposed to be able to have a break in between treatments. But I never got to out with friends for lunch. I was sleeping a lot, in and out of hospital, vomiting and coughing up blood, and experiencing fevers.
“They hooked me up to a breathing machine and at times I could communicate only using a translator on my phone. There was a time in treatment where I just wanted to give up I was in so much pain.”
Janine began to see her friends slip away, some struggling to see her so sick and others simply moving on with their busy lives. Her doctors told her she would likely never dance again.
The storm clouds which rolled in next were, in some ways, even harder for Janine than what she’d endured physically.
“It’s really hard to look back on it,” Janine tells, pausing before going on to describe her post-chemotherapy depression.
“I was just trying to grieve and come to terms with what had happened. I couldn’t process those feelings during treatment because I had to keep a happy, smiling face because everyone was freaking out worrying about me and I’m the type who doesn’t like people to worry about me. But inside, I was scared.”
Janine had to learn to write and drive again… and learn to live in a different body.
Slowly, with the help of family, the friends who’d stuck by her and cancer support organisation Canteen, which had been there throughout her journey, Janine realised that while the disease would always be a part of her life, it did not need to define her.
A return to the dance studio has been a major part of her recovery both mentally and physically.
“It’s unbelievable,” she enthuses. “I’m still amazed every time I do a performance. Twenty-year-old me had no idea what was coming my way and here I am thriving. I’m blessed I’m surrounded by
so much support.”
