Gutsy grandmother comes out swining against cancer

Anendra Singh
You're a golfer in the rough as a conifer towers over the line of your shot to the pin.
Do you concede a stroke by chipping back on to the fairway for an obstacle-free shot or do you take your chances to play "tin cup"?
It's the sort of scenario many golfers face, including Mangateretere Golf Club member Janet Goldsmith.
But on November 24, 1994, that golfing analogy perhaps best described Janet's mind as she faced the most important shot selection of her life.
It was 11.30am, at Wellington's Wakefield Hospital, and the prognosis wasn't good, the 65-year-old grandmother recalls vividly.
By mid-afternoon, she was reeling from the specialist's mind-numbing diagnosis.
"He told me I had cancer of the liver and two months to live," she said, tears welling as she sat in the lounge of her Hastings home, staring at the American baseball action on the muted ESPN television channel.
It was shock at first, then simply disbelief for the sports enthusiast, as she, husband Jack, son Earl, of Wellington, daughter Charmaine Gettins, of Napier, and son Shane, looked at each other.
Another son, Mark, a softballer who played in the United States, was unable to be there.
"To be sitting there one minute and then finding out you have two months to live is hard to explain," she said.
"My whole life flashed before my eyes - my family, my children and all that I had done," said Janet, dabbing away the tears.
If you asked her who she considered the most famous person in the world, you'd expect her to come up with someone like golfer Tiger Woods or tennis king Roger Federer but you'd be wrong.
"Dr Richard Stubbs is the most famous person in the world as far as I'm concerned," she said of the Wellington specialist. Hawke's Bay surgeon Jay Tyler had referred her to him for more tests following a successful operation for colon cancer.
Dr Stubbs likened her liver cancer surgery to what her husband, a motor mechanic, would have to do to find out what was wrong with a vehicle.
"He said, 'I know it sounds awful but that's what I'll have to do to you', and I could understand that perfectly well," she said.
The surgeon told her she could go home to spend her last few months with her family or undertake a life-threatening operation where most of the liver would be removed.
Janet decided to have the surgery but was relieved to find that what was left of her liver (only one-eighth) was going to grow back.
Hooked to "all sorts of wires and tubes", the grandmother of age-group White Sox softballer Melanie Gettins felt great after surgery.
Numerous three-monthly tests followed then, almost a year to the day, she was diagnosed with stomach cancer and had another operation.
"By that stage I could do many things myself, although my family were with me all the time. I had been past my biggest hurdle," said Goldsmith.
But the game for the Waipawa-born woman was not over yet.
In November, 1996, she was diagnosed with cancer again.
This time the disease had invaded her diaphragm.
"But Dr Stubbs said the diaphragm was like a sail, and I didn't need it - so out it went," Janet said with a smile.
After the surgery Dr Stubbs told her to go home and "walk and walk and walk".
Knee surgery meant she couldn't play tennis, netball so golf beckoned.
In July 2000 she came back home from Golflands, where she had been a member since it was first established in the mid-1970s to find a letter in her mailbox notifying her that she was due for a mammogram.
More cancer and more surgery.
"All my lymph nodes were taken out and I lost a breast, but six months later I was back on the golf course," she said triumphantly.
Janet vowed to win a golf championship somewhere. She did - the Mangateretere Women's Open Championship for five consecutive years from 2001.
With the sixth title beckoning in August, the 14 handicapper is keen to give it another go, just as she and husband Jack have done over the years as club administrators and committee members.
"I was a member there with Jack from the time the club opened but he played and I went backwards and forwards to let the kids enjoy their sports," said Janet.
The club members are like her second family and life-long alliances have been forged. When not at the club she supports her grandchildren in their sporting endeavours.
While medical insurance was a saviour, the Goldsmiths could not salvage their petrol station/garage business, JJ Motors, because of the time involved with looking after Janet. They had built it from scratch in Camberley, Hastings, near the hospital, but when Janet was diagnosed in 1994 they sold their 23 years of blood, sweat and tears.
"We used to fix the cars of doctors and nurses at the (Hawke's Bay) hospital and they used to say it was a nice spot for the undertakers. Well, I didn't want to think about it but there is an undertaker's business there now," Janet said.
It's been a hard spell and her experiences have left her with a different outlook on life.
"I appreciate each day, no matter how good, bad or ugly it may be. There are others out there who are worse off than me," she said.
"You learn to appreciate the little things in life and take nothing for granted. I'm really enjoying life and, touch wood," she said, leaning over to touch her dining table, "things will stay that way for a while".