Horowhenua Chronicle: Living with Cancer
I was playing around in the mud a fair bit this past weekend. I was planting trees in the rain on Saturday and running around the paddock for the New Zealand Parliamentary Rugby Team on Sunday.
For a bit of video from that game, click here.
The Parliamentary team is a cross party team made up of about 12 MPs (mainly from National, Maori and Labour), with the remainder of the players associated with Parliament in some way, like security guards. We play about six games a year, mostly under rules similar to those used by Golden Oldies.
In an MMP environment, party politics are left in the debating chamber and we all get stuck in and play together to win. I love the opportunity to get fit as we spend a fair bit of time sitting in meetings which is not good for the waist line. As it still involves a fair amount of body contact on the field the after match functions are a great deal of fun with the teams we come up against.
Last weekend I escaped early from the annual National Party Conference in Auckland to play against a North Harbour Invitation XV in a curtain-raiser to the North Harbour Ranfurly Shield Challenge. The invitation XV had several former All Blacks, including Frano Botica, Walter Little and Glen Osborne. We got thrashed, but I admired the skill of these players as Walter Little side stepped me on numerous occasions!
We played the Rahui All Stars yesterday at the Otaki Domain in front of about 200 supporters. The Rahui guys play together a bit in Golden Oldies tournaments, but this time we politicians sneaked home by a few tries.
Most importantly, though, yesterday’s game was a fundraiser for two Rahui rugby players who have been diagnosed with cancer. Both Huia Adams and Hamish Buick are very young to have cancer. I spoke to Hamish, who is only 18 years old, briefly after the game and he seemed positive about his future and was thankful for our support and that of many others. Because a number of local businesses, spectators and we MPs contributed to an after-match auction to help raise funds for their treatment. Two of the playing MPs mentioned they had been lucky to overcome cancer scares, so I hope the future is as optimistic for these two young men.
Local Waitarere Beach lady Chris Walsh has also suffered from cancer and has been lobbying the Government to fund Herceptin (a drug to fight women’s breast cancer). Chris has been fighting this campaign for some time now and the community support for her plight was shown a few months’ ago when hundreds turned up at the Cossie Club for a fundraising night with the Topp Twins. This function raised over $20,000 to go towards the Herceptin Fighting Fund to force a judicial review of Pharmac (the Government’s drug buyer) to allow Herceptin to be funded for 52 weeks for women with the early stage of HER2 positive breast cancer. Women completing chemotherapy treatment have a very tight time frame to begin Herceptin and it costs over $100,000 for the drug. Hence, more fundraising or individuals have to take out bank loans to afford it.
I guess what I learnt from a muddy weekend is that there is always someone worse off that needs a helping hand and cancer is so cruel on individuals and families – the unknown disease that just appears. My aches caused from the bottom of the ruck will pass but I am convinced we need to do more to support cancer patients. Let’s face it we all know someone struck by cancer.