The fight to be heard
Ollie and her partner, Chris, live in a small rural town in Southland. The couple have a big, blended family, with five kids and 13 grandchildren between them. Ollie has worn a lot of hats throughout her life – solo mum to two boys, taxi driver, fish and chip shop owner – and for the past 11 years, Ollie and Chris have run the local pub in Balfour, only selling the business recently to focus on the next stage of life.
Last year, Ollie began to struggle with severe back pain. “I’d spend nights on my knees, with the top half of my body and tummy lying across a chair, because that was the only thing that gave me some sort of relief.”
It got worse and worse over a period of months, to the point where she was struggling to do anything. “I just had a constant backache all the time,” she recalls. “I couldn’t walk very far, I couldn’t sit for long, I couldn’t sleep.”
She had also lost her appetite and dropped more than 30 kilograms. Despite frequent visits to her GP, she wasn’t given a clear explanation for her symptoms. At one point, she visited the doctor seven times in five weeks. “I’ll be honest,” she says. “That was probably the worst part of my whole journey.”
One day, fed up with feeling like she wasn’t being taken seriously, Ollie put her foot down.
“I said to the doctor, ‘I’m sick. I know I’m sick. There’s something wrong with me. I’m not leaving here until you do something.’”
This time, her doctor sent her off for a scan. “Four hours later, I got told I had a 28-centimetre mass on my back.”
Ollie finally knew what had been causing her such severe pain. She was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBC lymphoma), an aggressive form of non- Hodgkin lymphoma requiring urgent treatment.
“I was upset, of course, because I didn’t know what was going to happen to me,” she says. “But at least I finally had a diagnosis.”
Within weeks, Ollie had met with her haematologist at Dunedin Hospital. “It was very inspiring going to see her, because on the form I had to sign where they put down everything that would be happening to me, at the bottom, it said ‘cure’.”
“I just burst into tears, and I said, ‘Really? This isn’t going to kill me?’ And she said, ‘Not if you don’t let it.’”
Over the next several months, Ollie was back at the hospital every four weeks for chemotherapy. She was meant to have six rounds in total, but in the end, she was too unwell to receive the last one.
“I just had nothing left in me. I was in and out of hospital quite a bit because I got neutropenic.”
Although treatment was difficult, Ollie says she counts herself lucky when compared to some of the people she’s connected with during her journey. “The people I’ve met and the stories I’ve listened to in the last six months – they just break your heart.”
And she was relieved to have the support of her local LBC Support Services Coordinator, Deborah, throughout her lymphoma journey.
“Debbie talked me through lots of things and answered my questions. She sent me some brochures with information about all the different things.”
“She also sent me some fuel vouchers,” says Ollie. “While I was sick and in hospital, we weren’t making any money, and things were really quite tight for quite a while. So that was absolutely amazing for me.”
Now that they’ve sold the pub and she has more time, Ollie is looking forward to heading along to the LBC support group in Invercargill so she can connect with others who are on a similar journey.
That’s not to say she’ll be slowing down, though – “Retiring is not a word in my vocabulary!” she laughs. She says she and Chris would love to get away and do some travelling, and she likes the idea of taking on a part-time job where she can continue to connect with people in her community.
These days, although she’s well, Ollie still gets very tired. She’s trying to regain some of the muscle she’s lost, but her haematologist has told her it can take up to two years to feel “normal” again after treatment. Despite this, she’s happy to be alive and feels optimistic about what’s to come. In May, she travelled up to Auckland to speak about her experience at the awards dinner for LBC’s annual Firefighter Sky Tower Challenge.
“You know, we’re not here for a long time, and you’ve got to make the most of it. The world’s our oyster and the future is an open book.”
