Glued to the drama unfolding on the hit TV show Brothers and Sisters, Donna Burns was overwhelmed by emotion and a huge sense of déjà vu. Donna (37), a big fan of the US show, has been living her own version of Brothers and Sisters after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma – the same incurable disease as Calista Flockhart’s character Kitty.
“It’s uncanny how the show mirrors my life at the moment,” says Donna. “I found a lump in my neck and underarm last June, had the biopsy and was diagnosed with stage three, just like Kitty.”Exactly as Kitty’s mother Nora (Sally Field) did on screen, Donna’s own mother, Yvonne Gunn, swung into action, taking over household chores to encourage her daughter to rest. And Donna’s sister Jo (35) has become her chemo buddy – like Kitty’s sister Sarah, played by Australian Rachel Griffiths.
“oy sister was driving from Whakatane to my house in Rotorua every fortnight, just to sit with me for five or six hours while I had my chemo. We would gossip and Jo would tell me funny stories,” smiles Donna, who is mum to Tayla (3) and Kyra (4). “By the time the storyline became about Kitty’s cancer I was almost finished chemotherapy. It’s been so accurate, showing how the time from diagnosis to chemo is the worst emotionally. First I had to deal with finding out about the disease, and then I was scared what chemo would do to me.”
And there are other strange coincidences. Both Donna and Kitty have had the latest form of chemotherapy, which targets bad cells while sparing the healthy ones. The first sign for both fictional Kitty and real-life Donna was a lump on the neck.
“Kitty dismissed it as a gland being up, like me. When I got sick or stressed, I noticed this gland on my neck would pop out,” says Donna. When a large lump appeared under her arm, near her breast, she feared it was breast cancer and went for tests. She will never forget the moment she was given the results.
“I was dressing my girls to get their photos done at play centre. I had my makeup on and my husband John was on his way home from work so we could head off. Then the GP rang and said, ‘The good news is it isn’t breast cancer but you do have a type of cancer called lymphoma.’
“At that stage they didn’t know what type of lymphoma it was. I didn’t want to cry in front of my kids so I rang my mother and asked her to come round urgently. “As soon as she walked in I said, ‘oum, I’ve got cancer!’ They say a phone call changes your life and in that instant it did.”
When Donna had a subsequent scan to diagnose her form of lymphoma she noticed the specialist’s demeanor instantly change – and prepared herself for the worst. “I knew that she had seen something she didn’t want to see.” Not only was it confirmed that Donna had an incurable type of lymphoma – it had also spread throughout her body. “I cried when I found out I had seven to 12 years. My kids will still be so young.”
“I am so interested to see how Kitty is going to deal with her illness. So far she’s dealt with it like me. I never shed a lot of tears,” says Donna, who lost her hair during chemotherapy but wears a wig for special occasions.
Unlike Kitty, Donna never considered trading chemotherapy for alternative treatment.”That does go through your head – is chemo the only way? In my case I think I was too far gone – I’ve got two children – and I didn’t want to take the risk. I didn’t want it spreading to my bone. I don’t have time to do six months of her herbal therapy and have it go to my bone and then think, ‘Crap, that didn’t work!'”
Right now, Donna is currently cancer-free but she knows that one day it will return – and that’s when stem-cell replacements and bone marrow transplants will be her only possible treatment options. “In the words of my specialist, ‘People with this kind of cancer can have many years before they need to do anything else – let’s wait until your children are older before we go down that track.'”
Donna is naturally hoping against hope that medicine will find a cure so she can watch her girls grow up into womanhood and maybe meet her grandchildren. “The medical profession is advancing so fast – a pill that might cure melanoma is under development – so why not find a cure for me?” she says.
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