Government should fund cancer drugs that give gift of time - Nicky Rennie

Finance Minister Nicola Willis reading her Budget 2024 in Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Whanganui-based Nicky Rennie returned to her home town in 2018 while celebrating three decades in broadcasting. She has written a column for the Whanganui Chronicle since 2021.

OPINION

If you can get past your 50th year without having a brush with cancer yourself, you will most certainly know of friends or family who have been affected.

According to the Cancer Research Trust NZ, “one in three people in New Zealand are likely to be directly or indirectly affected by cancer”.

As a lifelong broadcaster, more than 11 years of which was spent in Dunedin, I was fortunate to work a lot with the Cancer Society doing all sorts of fundraising and promotional work.

During that time, I met an inspirational oncologist, Dr Christopher Jackson.

This unassuming health professional has a gift. It’s the gift of talking about cancer in a way anyone can understand. He has an innate ability to strip everything back to the basics and to talk about what is important to patients and families.

He was the medical director of the Cancer Society from 2015 until 2021.

He is often called upon for comments about cancer, its treatments and the situation the Government now finds itself in.

My horror when the Budget was read out and nothing was mentioned about their promise to fund $280 million over four years for 13 specific cancer treatments lit a fire in my belly that has yet to be doused.

Watching them bumble over what is a clumsy, unthought-out response to their attempts to fix this epic fail only adds fuel to that fire.

I believe this is the most cruel party promise ripped from trusting voters I have ever known.

One of the most poignant things I ever heard Dr Jackson say more than 10 years ago is that more people are living with cancer today than are dying from it.

He went on to say this was about the exponential changes and efficacy of the drugs that are now being manufactured. Where once a person would surely die from their cancer, they were now still part of their families’ lives and were having years added to their existence. The precious gift of time we feel is so harshly ripped from us when a diagnosis is heard can become a reality.

Is this personal? Hell yes.

My closest girlfriend lost her husband at the age of 49 to lung cancer.

He was a vital, still-young man who was sports-mad and who never smoked a day in his life. Their light at the end of the tunnel was one of the drugs on the magic list of 13: Keytruda.

He had worked all his life for one company and paid into the superannuation scheme and, at the time of his diagnosis, they made the decision to spend every last cent of that on that unfunded drug to give him more time.

They packed more into that three years than most do in a lifetime. They made a bucket list and boy did they tick everything off on that list. That was time they would not have had without the drug.

They were in a fortunate position because they had made wise financial decisions, but it still cost them upwards of $100,000. They did not have to re-mortgage their home, but would have gladly to give him more time.

As it was, and even with Keytruda, he went to his daughter’s dentistry graduation from Otago University in a tiny box with a shiny plaque on it. A tragedy.

I love a good Ernest Hemingway quote. One of my favourites is “do sober what you say you’ll do drunk”.

Here’s one from Nicky Rennie. “Do after Saturday, October 14, 2023, what you say you’ll do before.”