Kelly Gilmore was about to be sent home from ED with laxatives when a doctor overheard her crying on the phone and agreed to do a scan. Photo / Alan Gibson
Kelly Gilmore was about to be sent home from ED with laxatives when a doctor overheard her crying on the phone and agreed to do a scan. Photo / Alan Gibson
In Her Head is a Herald campaign for better health services. Health reporter Emma Russell investigates what's wrong with our system and talks to wāhine who have been made to feel their serious illness is a figment of their imagination or 'just part of being a woman'.
Kelly Gilmore wasabout to be sent home from the emergency department with laxatives and diet advice when a doctor overheard her crying on the phone and agreed to do a scan.
"The screen immediately lit up with a mass the size of a growing baby. I burst into tears, of joy, that there was something there and I wasn't crazy," Gilmore, now 40, said.
Yet in the two years prior, Gilmore - who works as an accountant - had visited two medical centres several times complaining of pain in her abdomen and saying she was gaining weight despite exercising more and eating less.
"I looked like I was nine months pregnant," she told the Herald.
Each visit she said she was told there was nothing wrong with her and that she was just overweight and needed to change her diet and live a healthier lifestyle.
"My tummy just kept getting bigger and bigger. I requested a scan only to be told I wasn't eligible," she said.
After Gilmore kept insisting something was wrong, she said, a nurse practitioner started to explore her mental health. She had a history of depression and anxiety and the nurse thought she could have possible personality disorder, medical records seen by the Herald show.
Gilmore doesn't blame the nurse practitioner, saying she didn't meet the criteria for a referral to see a specialist and the nurse was just doing her best to explore other possibilities. But it did make her feel crazy.
"It's really frustrating not being believed," she told the Herald.
"I started to think maybe it was in my head and it was just a cyst and would disappear."
Kelly Gilmore, 40, had a bowling ball-sized tumour inside her belly. Here's what she looked like before and after the surgery to remove it.
However, when New Zealand was entering its first nationwide Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, Gilmore turned up at Tauranga Hospital's emergency department in severe pain.
"It was getting to the point where the pain was becoming really bad and I couldn't eat no matter what position I was in," she said.
She said she was refused a scan and was about to be sent home with laxatives and more diet advice when she was overheard crying to her then-husband on the phone.
The doctor changed her mind at the last minute and they performed an ultrasound, Gilmore said.
She had a three-litre tumour growing in and around her organs.
Given the size of the tumour, she said, doctors operated almost immediately to remove it and tests were taken to check if it was cancer.
"I had no concerns it would be cancerous whatsoever, I completely brushed it off," she said.
A week after that, during alert level 3, she received a phone call from a doctor who told her she had ovarian cancer.
"It was really hard to hear," Gilmore said.
Gilmore with her two sons Leo Conder, 6, and Jack Conder, 4. Photo / Alan Gibson
In May 2020, she had another operation to see if there was any cancer left. It came back clear.
She counts herself lucky because she pushed for answers and it didn't end in a death sentence.
However, despite being two years cancer-free, she's been told by doctors there is a 70 per cent chance of recurrence and at that point there's very little chance it will be treatable. She now gets check-ups every two years.
"It's a scary thought to think next time it will likely kill me ... in my mind I question if it would have actually been cancer if they had caught it earlier and they had listened to me, would it have just been an ovarian cyst at that point, I don't know," Gilmore said.
She almost complained to the Health and Disability Commission, a New Zealand Crown entity responsible for protecting patients' rights, but decided against it because she didn't think it would be helpful for her own healing.
"Something needs to change, you can't just push it away as women's problems. It's not right".
About ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cause of female cancer death and kills more women than road crashes and melanoma.
There is no screening test and there are significant barriers to access the detection tests (a blood test and ultrasound).
In New Zealand the majority of women can't name a single symptom before diagnosis.
Symptoms of ovarian cancer can include bloating, eating less and feeling fuller, abdominal/pelvic/back pain, needing to pee more often/urgently, bowel habit changes, indigestion, painful intercourse, menstrual irregularities, unexplained weight change and fatigue.
Ovarian cancer survival is less than half that of breast cancer.
Australia, Canada and the United States have dedicated ovarian cancer research funds but in most years New Zealand funds none.
In New Zealand, our five-year survival rate is less than Australia and we have fewer funded drugs and clinical trials.
Follow women's personal stories of poor healthcare in our interactive grid below. Click on a face to go to the full story.
