Shock diagnosis for woman about to celebrate 10 years cancer-free

A woman’s big party to celebrate 10 years cancer-free has been put on hold after the shock diagnosis the disease has returned and is stage 4 and terminal.

Aucklander Chanda Cooper-Warren thought she had beaten cancer after a decade of clear scans and planned to mark the milestone with friends and family.

But the same week the mother of two was planning her party she started getting severe back pain and felt nauseous.

“My back and body were aching and I started vomiting, I knew something was wrong and saw my GP straight away,” Cooper-Warren said.

Her doctor tested for cancer screening markers and results showed these had increased 10 times since the last test a year ago.

Further testing and scans led to the catastrophic diagnosis of terminal stage 4 cancer.

“I really thought I had beaten this but unfortunately this is what cancer is like, it changes and it morphs,” Warren said.

Chanda Cooper-Warren thought she had beaten cancer after a decade of clear scans. Photo / Jason Oxenham

“The scan showed there are so many tumours in my spine they can’t really count them. It is all in my chest area, in my kidneys and bladder, my stomach, and main bones.”

The diagnosis devastated Cooper-Warren and her family, including her husband Tim and children Tama, 23, and Maia, 19.

The family believed the ongoing treatment of Tamoxifen and Zoladex Cooper-Warren was taking for the lobular breast cancer she was diagnosed with 10 years ago was still working.

Additional treatments of funded drugs Ibrance and letrozole were started 11 months ago with the expectation they would be effective for two years. Those have also stopped working.

Now, instead of a big party, Cooper-Warren is facing radiation and a $20,000-a-month bill for the unfunded chemotherapy drug Alpelisib and other therapies to beat cancer a second time around.

Chanda Cooper-Warren has been just diagnosed with stage 4 terminal cancer. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Her sister Erana Cooper has started a Givealittle page to help pay for the largely unfunded treatments.

Cooper-Warren has already started radiation therapy and will soon start Alpelisib and other treatments designed to kill the cancer, boost her immunity and block cancer pathways.

She is hopeful that advances in medicine since she was diagnosed more than 10 years ago will help her beat the disease.

Lobular breast cancer is harder to detect because it grows in lines within lobules and doesn’t clump. It is the second most common breast cancer in New Zealand and accounts for around 10 per cent of all cases.

Cooper-Warren’s first bout of cancer was missed in a mammogram and was found only after she insisted something was not right.

Her strong message to other New Zealand women was “to go with their gut feeling and if they thought something was wrong to insist on further testing”.

“Nothing showed up in the mammogram all those years ago, they said everything was clear, there was no problem and all was fine,” Cooper-Warren said.

“I said I could feel something and I knew all was not fine so they agreed to do an ultrasound.”

During the ultrasound, Cooper-Warren was lying down and the technician said he couldn’t see anything.

She insisted there was something there and asked if he could rescan with her sitting up.

“He said they didn’t normally do that but he got me to sit up and he rescanned - and then he saw it.”

The technician said he had never seen anything like it before and sent her for an MRI immediately.

“I could have accepted the scan was clear but I knew that when I was in the shower I could feel this thing.

“My breast was full of this lobular breast cancer.”

“I want women to speak up in a clinical setting even if they feel uncomfortable doing so.

“You are your own best advocate.”

Despite the most recent diagnosis, Cooper-Warren is positive further treatments will work and give her more time with her family.

“I have never thought this is going to get me and I have been steadfast in knowing that I am going to be okay,” she said.

“I have too much to live for and I believe everything is going to work. We didn’t get the time we wanted from the other treatment but we will just move on to plan B from here.”