“I'm celebrating my cancerversary today!” Given 12-14 months, still-terminal Kiwi woman alive 8 years after diagnosis

On Wednesday 1 June 2011 Vicki Walsh found out she had cancer in her brain. She was diagnosed with Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), also known as Grade 4 astrocytoma, an advanced form of the brain cancer that Wellington lawyer Lecretia Seales was diagnosed with in the same year. Vicki was given only 12 to 14 months to live.

However, today on Saturday 1 June 2019, Vicki celebrated exactly eight years of life after her diagnosis. "Waking up today on my cancerversary and realising this time eight years ago I’d just found out I was terminally ill with brain cancer and given a maximum of 12-14 months to live. Life is very different, and I could focus on the bad stuff but I’ve learnt that will get me nowhere. Instead I’m appreciating the new and improved version of myself and wondering what to have for breakfast!" she said earlier today.

Vicki is still terminally ill with the brain tumour. But she is beating all the odds despite her prognosis – which is still 12-14 months maximum all these years later. She advocates for the vulnerable, helps make her city of Palmerston North more disability friendly and vocally opposes the End of Life Choice Bill, having travelled to meet MPs in Wellington twice this year to speak against the Bill. In the last eight years she's had three more grandchildren, been to her son’s 21st, and celebrated 20 years of being married to her ‘soulmate’ Dave.

Vicki also told her story in the documentary ‘Terminal but not dead yet’, the fourth documentary released earlier this year by #DefendNZ – the a grassroots movement opposed to the End of Life Choice Bill.

Vicki has watched stories and campaigns unfold advocating for assisted suicide and euthanasia for people with conditions like hers. In the first few years after her diagnosis, she was particularly affected by media reports of Brittany Maynard in the US and Lecretia Seales. Vicki says that the way euthanasia was often discussed in the media – as being a noble and dignified way for the terminally ill to die – made her feel like she was “gutless” for not wanting to end her life.

Vicki recalls, “It really upset me. My husband Dave would come home from work to find me a blithering mess because all it did was put pressure on me constantly to feel like I was being selfish by not taking my life.”

Today however, exactly eight years after her initial diagnosis, Vicki is still terminal, but appreciating every day of being alive. She worries about the messages the End of Life Choice Bill would send to people with conditions like hers – that they would feel pressured to end their lives early.

And she’s worried about the dangers that would come from giving doctors the legal ability to end patients’ lives. Vicki doesn’t think she could trust a doctor who, on one of her dark days, could help her to end her life.

Her story can be read and watched in full at www.defendnz.co.nz/vicki

ENDS

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