One day at a time
“Hairdresser, dance teacher, great life, really fit – and then this nasty little thing called myeloma showed up…”
In December 2020, most Kiwis were enjoying the start of summer after a difficult year navigating COVID-19. But for New Plymouth dance teacher Chere, December 2020 was just the beginning of a journey that would leave her questioning everything.
“I’d had an incredibly sore back and hips,” Chere says. It was something she’d brought up with her doctor several times, but it had always been put down to her lifestyle – after all, she was a hairdresser and a dance teacher, so she was on her feet for most of the day.
But when she found out her old GP had returned from overseas, she booked in to see him for a second opinion. Over the next few days, he ordered blood tests, an MRI and finally a Bence-Jones test. Two days later, he asked Chere to come back in for the results.
“He sat there and said, ‘I’m really sorry, but you’ve got multiple myeloma.’”
It was 3 December when Chere received the news, and she had her dance school’s end-of- year show just three days later.
“It was a real bolt, because I had the dance show coming up, and I’ve been told I’ve got cancer, and it’s not really on the ticket, is it?”
Chere went ahead with the show, only telling one person there what had happened. After that, it was straight into treatment with CyBorD. “And then my back collapsed – that was just awful. I thought, what am I going to do now? I’m a dance teacher and I have a school of about 100 students. That was in January, and the studio opens in February, so it wasn’t looking very good.”
“But I was really determined, and I said to the haematologist right at the point of being diagnosed, ‘I’m going to live until I die. I’m not going to live like I’m dying.’”
Chere managed to return to teaching dance classes with the help of a walking stick and a special chair. But she decided it was important to let her students’ parents know what was going on.
“I told them what was happening and that I didn’t know what it meant. Was I going to die in a year? Was I going to live? What was going to happen?”
“I gave them all the opportunity to take their children elsewhere if they needed to, but none of them did. They all stood with me.”
Chere also had LBC Support Services Coordinators Nicki and Sally standing with her. She was first introduced to them when she started going down to Palmerston North in the early days of her treatment.
“LBC were incredible. We got petrol vouchers, vouchers for parking, and it just took all that stress away. Nicki and Sally really looked after me and were always just a phone call away.”
The support from LBC was especially important in those early stages of navigating Chere’s diagnosis and treatment. “You wouldn’t have known what you were supposed to do if LBC weren’t there – the haematologist says come back next week, we’re going to start you on that, and it’s like – your head’s fried. And then LBC steps in.”
Chere went through 16 weeks of chemotherapy, only to find out she wasn’t responding to it as hoped. “The difficulty of it was, I went through all of that, and it didn’t work.”
Her haematologist suggested they try a stem cell transplant. “I remember walking out and just being quite bewildered – there’s no time to stop and breathe and think, now, is this what I want to do? Do I actually want to do this?”
After some initial trouble harvesting Chere’s stem cells, the second attempt was a success, and the transplant was able to go ahead. But Chere wasn’t prepared for how hard the process would be.
“I just got sick as a dog. I was so sick. I ended up at 55 kg after the stem cell transplant.”
The thing she found the hardest throughout her journey was losing her hair. “One day I went into the shower, and it just all fell out, spectacularly, all at once,” she says. “I cried like a baby – I think it was just the last straw.”
“You’re fighting this fight, and then it’s like, well, there goes the hair – that pretty much says it all now, doesn’t it? It’s pretty obvious what’s wrong with me.”
Although Chere is now in remission, she still lives with terrible bone pain and fatigue, and life isn’t always easy. “Do I love life? Some days I don’t love it at all, and I would rather not be here. But I’ve got to remind myself that I am here, and there are people who love me and want me around.”
Chere’s strong faith in God is also a source of hope. “Without Christ, the days would be difficult.”
Chere is looking forward to this summer – to long days out on the deck and not feeling guilty about putting her feet up. She’s not sure what the future holds, but that’s okay.
“One day at a time – that’s my philosophy. One day at a time.”
