Helen wants to make Cancer just a chapter of her life, not the story of her life……..

Meet our mum Helen, a young 49-year-old wonder woman with three children. Married to her teenage sweetheart Ray 50, Mother to Olivia 27 and Son-in-Law Josh 28, Chloe 25, Jack 21 and Grandmother to Jed who is 10 months old.

You hear about those people who are incredibly selfless and would do anything for another person and that's our mum, Helen. She hasn't had the most stressless life and one can imagine (if they believe) that stress has played large a part in Helen's battle with Breast Cancer.

With two of her three children being diagnosed with Carotid body tumors (invasive tumors in the main artery of your neck, supplying blood to your brain) as teenagers and having to undergo potentially life-threatening surgery. (Left untreated could result in a stroke and being left in a vegetative state). As you would imagine, Mum was by our side every step of the way.

As well as her children being diagnosed with these rare tumors, Helen was by Ray’s side for the same diagnosis. Unfortunately Dad (and Mum) have been through the ringer with his health as well. After contracting a rare blood virus which attacked his internal organs resulting in Renal Failure and having to undergo Chemotherapy, multiple plasma transplants, Dialysis and finally was fortunate enough to receive that call we had all been waiting for to rush to Auckland for a kidney transplant. Unfortunately, Dad suffered a lot of complications post-transplant, with the medication causing his bones to deteriorate and resulting in a double knee replacement, as well as being rushed into intensive care after collapsing from internal bleeding. This resulted in temporary blindness and was lucky to come away without any brain damage. Although this is just a brief overview of what Mum had to deal with, this was over a 12-year period of many sleepless nights, having to rush to and from Waikato hospital and being told that this time we would have to say goodbye.

Even with Mum's selfless nature, she continued to work through this tough time as an art teacher for people with disabilities and respite care. Always managing to ensure that her student's needs were met as well as her families.

Unfortunately, months after Dad was back at work again and we finally thought life could get back on track again, we received devastating news of mum's aggressive Breast Cancer diagnosis, just as she was about to take a few weeks leave with her first Grandchild to be born.

Helen has fought this head-on with her favourite line "you can't kill weeds". She has taken on aggressive chemotherapy like a champion, even after the tumor doubled in size after finishing the first round and when waiting for surgery. She took on the second round knowing what she was fighting for. Through all the days where she couldn't get out of bed, she was finally able to get into surgery just before Christmas and has also completed radiation therapy. However in this time, things haven't quite gone our way and with cancer moving to her blood and a tumor now in her neck, we are trying to find alternative treatments and trials now that conventional treatments are no longer an option.