Charlotte Varcoe
A MOTHER-DAUGHTER duo who regularly travel to Warrnambool for life-saving treatment has joined the fight for a radiation therapy service for Mount Gambier.
Speaking with The Border Watch after travelling back from Warrnambool for the weekend, Mount Gambier resident Hailey Tincknell said having the therapy available within the region would allow her to return to work and help her oldest child attend school.
Ms Tincknell was officially diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer on June 7 last year and has already undertaken surgery to have her entire right breast removed and five months of chemotherapy.
During this time, her mother Leeanne was residing in a caravan park in Warrnambool to receive radiation treatment after being diagnosed with stage-two breast cancer.
Now, Ms Tincknell is halfway through her five-week radiation therapy treatment in Warrnambool, where she stays at a cabin in a caravan park.
“When I got diagnosed, there were a lot of thoughts going on in my head regarding the kids and the road ahead,” Ms Tincknell said.
“I felt a lump in my breast and put it off for a while, not thinking it was really anything but when I went for an ultrasound, they said it looked suspicious and I had both a biopsy and a mammogram.
“They found about eight lumps in my breast and it went into three of my lymph nodes as well.”
After receiving the surgery and five months of chemotherapy in Mount Gambier, Ms Tincknell was then sent to Warrnambool for five weeks of radiation therapy.
“Going through chemotherapy locally was good because there was a lot of support available, which made it easier,” she said.
“My kids were my motivation to get through this and get better, so being with them really helped.”
Now residing at a caravan park in Warrnambool in order to receive her radiation treatment, Ms Tincknell said it remained emotionally difficult on herself and her family.
“I started my treatment during the school holidays and I didn’t have a choice about the timing because you don’t get to choose when you have radiation therapy,” she said.
“Everywhere was fully booked or very expensive and it is also a long round-trip, so if someone wants to come and stay that is also money out of their pocket.”
She said if the services were available in Mount Gambier, she would be able to support her oldest child through the school week, work at her business inbetween treatments and have full family support, as she did with her chemotherapy treatment.
“I would think chemotherapy and radiation therapy would go hand-in-hand and I think we should have the two here because it would benefit so many people,” Ms Tincknell said.
“It doesn’t make sense to me to have a chemotherapy unit without radiation as well.
“Having the services here would make everybody’s lives so much easier and being able to have the support as well means I would be able to go back to my own home and live my life as normal as possible.”
Ms Tincknell’s mother agreed with the concerns and said if radiation therapy was available locally, she would be able to support her daughter when she needed it the most.
“Hailey was diagnosed when I was going in for surgery,” she said.
“She was diagnosed on the Tuesday and I was going in for the operation on the Friday.
“To be away from Hailey when she needed me the most was awful and you don’t want your daughter going through what she went through.”
Diagnosed with stage-two breast cancer through the Breast Cancer SA bus, Ms Tincknell spent three weeks in Warrnambool following surgery for her radiation therapy.
“I stayed at a caravan park as well but it was out of my own pocket, which was a huge expense because I was casually employed,” she said.
“But if the radiation therapy services were available here in Mount Gambier, it would have been amazing because I would have been home to support Hailey, which was my main focus at the time.
“I didn’t want to be away from her but I didn’t have a choice. I wanted to be back in Mount Gambier because I knew what Hailey was going through and I couldn’t do anything to support her, which was the worst feeling as a mum.”
She said a radiation therapy service in Mount Gambier would service a wide range of people in similar circumstances.
“It is hard enough to have to go through a journey like that by being so far away but then to find out your daughter has stage-three breast cancer was even worse,” Ms Tincknell said.
“Having the facility here would have been so much better because I was all the way in Warrnambool for three weeks when my daughter was going through the fight of her life, But I needed to get better and heal myself so I could focus on Hailey, which wasn’t easy.”
