Bay of Plenty Times
  • Bay of Plenty Times home
  • Latest news
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Sport
  • Video
  • Death notices
  • Classifieds

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • On The Up
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Residential property listings
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
  • Sport

Locations

  • Coromandel & Hauraki
  • Katikati
  • Tauranga
  • Mount Maunganui
  • Pāpāmoa
  • Te Puke
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua

Media

  • Video
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-Editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

Weather

  • Thames
  • Tauranga
  • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Bay of Plenty Times / Lifestyle

Early detection of cancer essential

By James Fuller
Bay of Plenty Times·
30 Nov, 2012 01:19 AM4 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

``It saved my life,'' says Sandy Gilligan of the routine mammogram which revealed she had breast cancer.

Sitting in the peaceful, homely surroundings of the Breast Cancer Support Service Tauranga Trust, Ms Gilligan encourages other women to take up the free mammograms available to them.

``The Breast Screen Aotearoa programme is fantastic. I can tell you it's saving lives. There are women out there who are going along thinking all is well, just as I did, and then having an abnormal mammogram. But that's positive, it gives you the chance to say `right, we've got to sort this out'. Quite often it can be a benign lump or even a cyst. It's always better to know.''

For Ms Gilligan there had been no prior indication of any problems. Life was progressing normally for the mother-of-two who was screened just before going on a week-long holiday with her sister.

``I got back from holiday and got a phone call at home to ask if I could come back to have a repeat mammogram. The next day I went to see my GP and she said an abnormality had been picked up.''

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

A second mammogram and ultrasound confirmed the presence of that abnormality. A sample was taken, via core biopsy, and sent to a pathologist.

``A few days later I got the phone call to say I had been diagnosed with breast cancer,'' says the 69-year-old from Otumoetai.



Speaking of the shock of learning she had a life-threatening illness she pauses and looks away before simply saying: `

`It was upsetting.''

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Ms Gilligan says she remembers the subsequent sequence of events vividly.



``The first person I called was my sister, who lives here in the Bay. She came over and then I rang my daughter Janine in Auckland and gave her the news. My son Michael was in the South Island on business so Janine rang to tell him. When I spoke to my daughter I was quite calm but I could hear in her voice how upset she was.''

A short time later her son rang.

``He said `Oh mum, I've been dreading this phone call'. I said: `Come on, it's going to be all right. You know me. It's just a bit of a nuisance. We'll sort it out.' I wasn't really feeling like that but I needed to comfort them too.''

Ms Gilligan was booked to see a surgeon at Tauranga Hospital and, at the meeting, was told she had an infiltrating ductal carcinoma.

``Infiltrating meant it wasn't localised any longer, it was on the move,'' she says. ``We had a really good discussion and he recommended a lumpectomy. There's several procedures you can have to treat the tumours but it depends on the tumour, the size, the location and the patient themselves.''

The operation, the start of what became nearly a year of treatment, was a success.

``They leave you for about six weeks after surgery because you have to heal and be well enough to cope with the next stage, which for me was chemotherapy.''

Ms Gilligan lost her hair during the chemotherapy treatment but it also was successful.

``I then started radiation treatment. You get a simulation day where you meet the radiation oncologist and he takes you through the process. He tells you the area to be treated and you're tattooed on the area. That's so the radiation people know where to treat you.''

Ms Gilligan, who went through her battle with cancer in 2000 when she was 57, was treated in the public health system. During her treatment she spent six weeks at the Lions Cancer Lodge, based in the Waikato Hospital grounds, in Hamilton.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

``The lodge, the rooms, the food, the care were all fantastic,'' she says. ``Everyone who looked after me whether it was at Tauranga Hospital or at Waikato were absolutely wonderful. They're really special people.''

Following Ms Gilligan's radiation treatment she was prescribed Tamoxifen for five years.

``You're appointed an oncologist to monitor your progress and I started off with three monthly visits. As time went on and all was well, I went to six monthly and then annual. Now here I am nearly 13 years down the track and all is well.''

Ms Gilligan, who became a trustee of the Breast Cancer Support Service Tauranga Trust in 2001, has yearly mammograms and will do for the rest of her life. She encourages women to take up the free, biennial, mammograms available for 45 to 69-year-olds.

``I encourage women as strongly as I can to have their mammograms done to make sure all is well ... And, if something is picked up and it is breast cancer, early detection gives you a much better chance of being cured and enjoying a long life.''

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Lifestyle

Bay of Plenty Times

The secret sauce of the bar named NZ's best

Bay of Plenty Times

Robyn Malcolm, Toni Street, Kiri Nathan and Cassie Roma share defining moments

Bay of Plenty Times

Tauranga couple's 'amazing journey' to parenthood


Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

The secret sauce of the bar named NZ's best
Bay of Plenty Times

The secret sauce of the bar named NZ's best

'I’ve always wanted to be called an institution – that’s my goal.'

08 Jul 10:00 PM
Robyn Malcolm, Toni Street, Kiri Nathan and Cassie Roma share defining moments
Bay of Plenty Times

Robyn Malcolm, Toni Street, Kiri Nathan and Cassie Roma share defining moments

26 Jun 10:00 PM
Tauranga couple's 'amazing journey' to parenthood
Bay of Plenty Times

Tauranga couple's 'amazing journey' to parenthood

20 Jun 05:00 PM


Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

06 Jul 09:47 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • Bay of Plenty Times e-edition
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Subscribe to the Bay of Plenty Times
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP