A nurse whose young son survived cancer is now having to fundraise to be able to take sick leave to undergo her own cancer treatment.
Lizelle Lombaard is a mum-of-three from Wellington who has an aggressive form of breast cancer and recently had two tumours removed.
One of those was believed to be a grade three invasive ductal carcinoma, a fast-growing cancer that has a high likelihood of spreading.
Lombaard was advised to take up to three weeks off work to recover from surgery but could only afford to take three days of unpaid leave.
After struggling financially during her son’s battle with cancer, Lombaard is now stressed about the strain her own diagnosis is putting on her family’s finances.
When Lombaard’s twin boys turned 4, her son Riley was diagnosed with leukaemia.
She said she worked in finance for 15 years until he got sick, which forced her to navigate medical appointments and hospital stays alongside “next level” stress and a heavy workload.
“[I] was often made to feel that putting my child’s health and life first was a burden to my team and employer,” she said.
Lombaard resigned to focus on accompanying Riley throughout his hospital visits, while her husband was made redundant and stayed at home to take care of their other children.
It created a “huge financial burden” that took them years to claw their way out of.
Riley received treatment for two years and eventually became cancer-free in 2024.
By that point, Lombaard decided she wanted to start working fulltime again and saw an advert to study nursing.
“After having lived and breathed everything medical with my son and Covid, I decided I want a more meaningful career and to give back to New Zealand for the care they provided us during his treatment.”
She studied fulltime for two years to become a qualified nurse and now works at a community GP clinic.
Lombaard started her current role in December, two weeks before she received her cancer diagnosis.
“I was in shock, my husband was paralysed with fear for our young children and what lies ahead,” she said.
“We chose not to tell our kids as we didn’t want to ruin the holidays ... There is still a lot of trauma around cancer in our family after Riley’s battle during Covid.”
Because Lombaard was new in her job, she had not accrued much annual leave or any sick leave.
In New Zealand, employees are entitled to 10 days of sick leave per year but they only start accruing this leave once they have worked for the same employer for at least six months.
That meant the leave Lombaard took for surgery recovery, and any future leave she takes related to her cancer, will be unpaid until she starts accruing sick leave in May.
She said she enjoyed her current job with her “wonderful” colleagues and did not blame her employer for her lack of paid sick leave.
On Lombaard’s request, her employer put her on “light desk duties” after her surgery for two weeks and while she was able to manage her pain, she still experienced mental and emotional impacts during the work day.
Lombaard’s family have started a Givealittle page to help cover costs such as rent and childcare. The page has raised $3780 at time of publication.
She does not have a fundraising target in mind because she does not yet know what her final diagnosis is, what treatments she will need, or how much more time off work she will require.
She said she tried accessing temporary financial support from the Ministry of Social Development but her family income for the past year was too high for her to qualify.
Lombaard recently learned she could be carrying genes for hereditary cancers that she might have passed onto her children.
For her and her children to be privately tested for these genes, it would cost her about $6000 because she does not qualify for the publicly funded tests.
She said she hoped to raise enough funds to pay for these tests so she could give her children “the necessary information to allow them to receive more surveillance and monitoring in future in order to identify early signs of cancers”.
Lombaard said she used to have trauma insurance but could not afford to keep paying for it when her son got sick.
For people with serious illnesses or injuries, trauma insurance can provide a one-off lump sum payment to help manage the financial impact of being unwell.
She believed if she still had it, she would have received a payout that could have given her family “financial breathing room”.
She said if she and her son wanted to get insurance now, they would have to wait until they were free from cancer and its symptoms for at least 10 years to be eligible.
“We want to encourage every New Zealander that can afford life insurance and trauma insurance to get it in place now,” she said.
Lombaard also wanted to encourage people to stay on top of their mammograms, and breast cancer and cervical screenings.
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.