The room is full of smiles and laughter, there’s kai on the table, and there is an air of celebration.
Charlie Oliver is being discharged from the Tui Ora Cancer Navigation Service because he is in remission from the cancer that has made the last 18 months seem like a dream, a very bad dream.
But it is a celebration tinged with sadness because Toni-Ann Beekmans (registered nurse) and Donna Akariri (Kaiarahi) have provided more than just a service to this whānau – they have been a lifeline.
“They made a difference to us from the first moment we met,” said Toni, Charlie’s wife. “All of a sudden there was someone to talk to, who understood, who wasn’t going to get angry or upset. They helped us understand the medical jargon, advocate for us with an increasingly frustrating health system who weren’t giving us the answers we wanted and gave us the ability to make informed choices.
“They walked into our home and all of a sudden I wasn’t carrying everything on my shoulders anymore.”
It has been an extremely tough time for the couple and their three boys Dontay (23), Tyrese (20), and Jaxx (12), and daughter Raiha (16), which started in February 2024 when Charlie started to choke on his food.
“I kept saying, ‘you need to slow down and chew your food properly’,” said Toni with a wry smile. “But when he was struggling with food like scrambled egg, soft stuff, and was losing weight really fast, we knew there was something going on.”
Charlie saw his GP, who referred him to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist.
“They told me they thought it was a food blockage at first, but then I had a couple of biopsies and a PET scan (a positron emission tomography scan where a radioactive tracer liquid is put into the body which is absorbed by certain tissues such as cancer, which then shows up as a glowing area when the machine takes an image) and we got the diagnosis – cancer.”
Charlie was driving his truck – he works for McCarthy Transport, who have been hugely supportive – when he got the call.
“They just told me over the phone – it’s cancer. I had to pull over and I just cried and cried. Then I called Toni, and she was crying.”
The family were reeling from the news but had little time to process what was happening.
“All of a sudden we were in this crazy time of appointments in Auckland and Hamilton, waiting to hear what the treatment plan was going to be, trying to support Charlie who still wasn’t able to eat, support the kids who were terrified, and well as dealing with the everyday stuff that doesn’t stop just because someone has cancer,” says Toni. “It was just awful.”
The family were struggling to cope with it all – and then Toni-Ann and Donna came in their lives.
“I didn’t really know how they were going to help us to start with,” said Toni. “But they did. With everything. They became an integral part of our support system, and part of the family, really.”
And that’s because Toni-Ann and Donna are experts in understanding what a whānau might need while on a hikoi with cancer.
“For many families, they feel alone because the world is just carrying along when they are dealing with this huge thing. They’ve got to deal with the diagnosis, with the health system, to try and keep normality, with their emotions.” says Donna.
“Then we turn up and suddenly they aren’t alone anymore, they have someone in their corner. Because we don’t focus on the cancer, like the clinicians do, we look at the whole family and what can be done to support them all in a holistic way.”
Toni-Ann and Donna were right there as Charlie started gruelling chemotherapy treatment, were the first people they called when Charlie got the news the tumour had shrunk and supported them again when he needed to go to Palmerston North for six weeks of radiotherapy, which saw their children have to travel down on Christmas Day so they could be together.
And they were there at the end of the phone three months later when scan results showed ‘no glow’, or no evidence of a tumour.
Charlie has a few more check-ups before he can say he is cancer-free, but for him and his family, for now, the hardest of journeys is over.
“We will miss Toni-Ann and Donna immensely,” says Toni. “I wish we had known about the Tui Ora service earlier so they could have been there from the start, it would have made such a difference getting through those early days.”
“We are here for anyone, if you are registered with us or not, who is on a cancer journey, even if you have not yet had a diagnosis, we are here to help,” says Toni-Ann.
“It’s a totally free service that puts you and your whānau at the heart of what is happening, not the cancer. We can help you on your journey, however long or short it is. Just reach out or ask your doctor to refer you.”
You can contact Tui Ora on 0800 TUI ORA (884 672) or by emailing us on [email protected]. Check out our Facebook page too.