Idyllic holiday will be young family’s last

The McLean family of Hawke’s Bay – mum Katrina, dad Tom, 4-yearold Max and baby Poppy – are on holiday, driving a campervan around the South Island. It would be idyllic were it not for the knowledge this is the last time they will all be away together.

Tom, 31, has terminal cancer and only months left to live.

In February last year, when Katrina, 33, was four months pregnant with Poppy, Tom – a fit and healthy plumber and gasfitter – began to notice his heart beating out of rhythm. He sometimes felt a bit dizzy and breathless.

His GP diagnosed atrial fibrillation, a condition causing an irregular and rapid heartbeat. It’s unusual in young people.

Tom was referred to a cardiologist but because there was a long wait, he and Katrina decided to use their health insurance to go to a private specialist. Even then, Tom didn’t get an appointment until April.

‘‘The cardiologist was just mucking around doing his thing, and he noticed there was a mass in [Tom’s] heart,’’ recalled Katrina.

‘‘That was on a Thursday night. The Friday we had to go into hospital.’’

At Hawke’s Bay Hospital, doctors carried out an echocardiogram that revealed a huge mass in the left atrium of Tom’s heart.

He was rushed to Wellington Regional Hospital and, on the Monday, surgeons removed a 5-centimetre mass. That surgery was pronounced ‘‘successful’’, Katrina said, and while doctors were still unsure what the mass was, they thought it was benign.

Katrina was so confident of good news that she decided to drive back to Hawke’s Bay. She was halfway there when the hospital called to ask her to attend a family meeting.

She phoned in from her parents’ house to learn the worst possible news: the mass was a high-grade sarcoma, a rare and particularly aggressive cancer.

The prognosis wasn’t good. Doctors told the McLeans if a patient had a sarcoma in their arm, they would amputate – not an option for the heart.

‘‘It felt surreal,’’ Katrina said. ‘‘Hearing that over the phone is hard but being pregnant and having a little one and being told your young husband has a very shortened lifespan . . . I didn’t really know what to do.’’

She felt some grief and also fear for the future: ‘‘What do we do? How am I going to cope?’’

At one point, she even Googled pregnancy terminations. ‘‘I wouldn’t have done it anyway but it was that shock moment, that panic: I can’t change my situation; what can I change?’’

The cancer was terminal; doctors said Tom had between one and three years to live.

To prolong that as much as possible, in June 2019, Tom embarked upon an aggressive course of chemotherapy that saw him in Palmerston North Hospital for one week, then home for two over five cycles.

During the second-to-last cycle, while in Palmerston North with Tom, Katrina went into labour a week early. ‘‘A nurse brought Tom down [to the delivery ward] to be there. He got there just in time for the birth,’’ she said.

Following the chemo, Tom had 51⁄2-weeks of radiation. The Cancer Society arranged a house for him to live in during the week and he headed back up to Katrina and the kids on weekends.

It was gruelling and hard on everyone. But Katrina had hope.

‘‘I knew the cancer would kill him . . . But you’re just living in that hope that even if we got 10 years together, just wanting him to watch the kids grow up and having my best mate around.’’

After Tom finished his radiation treatment in November, it looked like that could be the case. He had minimal side-effects and was feeling ‘‘amazing’’, his wife said – energetic enough to mow lawns and paint fences.

A follow-up scan in early March came back clear and the couple, who have been married for 51⁄2-years, made plans to go back to work after lockdown.

But, as the country prepared to go into level 3, Tom discovered lumps on his leg and neck.

On Katrina’s first day back at work as a software tester, Tom had an appointment with his oncologist. She was pretty sure the cancer was back, and a scan in mid-June confirmed the worst.

‘‘His PET scan lit up like a Christmas tree,’’ Katrina said.

The cancer had spread all over Tom’s body, and he was given just months left to live.

The family was devastated. ‘‘I knew this would come, I just didn’t think it would be so soon.’’

The hardest thing so far had been telling Max his daddy is going to die. ‘‘He said, ‘I don’t want Daddy to die.’ I’m like, ‘Neither do I, baby.’ Then he started bawling his eyes out, then we both started crying.’’

The McLeans are now off on their holiday, ‘‘taking lots of photos and making memories’’.

Katrina didn’t know what she would do after Tom died. ‘‘Just muddle through life being a widow with two kids.’’

Stuff has a media partnership with the Cancer Society as it marks its 30th Daffodil Day on August 28. Read more about our editorial partnership arrangements at stuff.co.nz/aboutstuff