Sitting in a small hospital office waiting for the results of her colonoscopy, 31-year-old Melissa Laing was eager to finally get some answers to the dramatic weight loss, night sweats, bloating and discomfort she’d been living with for the past year.
“There are a few polyps but don’t stress, it won’t be bowel cancer, you’re far too young for that,” the specialist assured her with a pat on the knee.
Frustrated and feeling dismissed, Melissa, now 35, was starting to wonder if she was a hypochondriac.
But thankfully, the solo mother-of-one trusted her instincts and kept pushing for a second colonoscopy.
Melissa and daughter Savanna are making special memories together.
“I thought maybe it would be Crohn’s disease or coeliac and I’d have to give up bread,” recalls Melissa, who was not prepared for the shocking news that followed.
“I was sitting in Dr John Jarvis’ office having a sandwich and a cup of tea. I could tell by his demeanour something was wrong, then he looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘We found cancer.'”
Devastated, her thoughts instantly turned to her then eight-year-old daughter Savanna. “I just thought, ‘She’s going to lose her mum.’
“Cancer has such a bad stigma and you don’t hear the good stories – you always hear that they died,” says Melissa, who is sharing her story with the Weekly for Bowel Cancer New Zealand’s Never Too Young month.
The following day, Melissa was sent to Waitakere Hospital in West Auckland, where a CT scan showed it was stage three – still treatable but they had no time to waste.
“My entire large bowel, 1.8 metres of it, from wall to wall, was completely covered in polyps,” she tells. “A whole lot had amalgamated and made a tumour that had been growing.”
It was a scary time learning she needed urgent surgery to remove her large bowel, but Melissa is grateful every day that Dr Jarvis acted so fast.
“I remember asking, ‘What does this mean? Can I survive without one?’ He explained how they would connect up my small bowel instead and things would be different, but I could live with it.”
There was also a chance Melissa would need an ileostomy bag – a bag outside the body used to collect faecal waste.
A relieved Melissa has now had bag-reversal surgery.
“I was one month into being 31, single and I didn’t want a bag. Going through cancer is big enough, please don’t give me a bag,” pleaded Melissa, who woke up from surgery to see her worst fears confirmed.
“The operation was meant to be four and a half hours and ended up being nine hours. I woke up full of tubes and needles, and with a bag.”
Initially, Aucklander Melissa was told the bag would be in for four weeks while she was recovering in hospital.
“That I could live with, but four weeks passed and they decided I needed to have 12 rounds of chemotherapy to be on the safe side. I just thought, ‘Oh, my God, now my daughter is going to see me sick and lose my hair.”
Throughout the incredibly challenging journey, Melissa was steadfastly supported by her parents Dennis and Judy, and continually inspired by Savanna to keep going.
“Being a solo mum, I couldn’t break down or fail. She needed me,” says the stoic mother, who was so determined to keep life as normal as possible, she even continued working full-time throughout treatment.
“When I got diagnosed, I decided it was not going to beat me and not going to take over my life,” says Melissa. “Right from the start I committed to that mindset.”
Part of this was choosing not tell Savanna she had cancer.
Melissa kept the seriousness of the treatment from her daughter.
“She knew I was a bit sick, but I didn’t want to use the ‘C word’ because I didn’t want her to worry “Is my mummy going to die?” Everyone respected that decision. It was for her protection so she could go to school, play and just be a kid.”
After six months of chemotherapy treatment, Melissa was overjoyed to get the all-clear and to finally be eligible for the ileostomy bag reversal surgery.
Melissa says it’s been a wild ride but life is pretty much back to normal. She’s returned to the gym, trained her body to eat most foods again, and is busy advancing her career as an account manager in the print and signage industry.
“Never in a million years did I expect this would happen to me,” says Melissa, who is busy planning some future adventures with Savanna, now 12. “It’s taught me to be kind to myself and if I want to do something, to do it, because you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
She also wants to encourage others to take control of their health.
“I’ve learnt you need to fight for yourself. No one knows your body like you do, so if something doesn’t feel right, keep pushing.”
Aotearoa has one of the highest rates of bowel cancer in the world. To find out more about symptoms and where to get help, visit bowelcancernz.org.nz/never-too-young
