Woman’s amputation plea answered
Just one week ago, Elane Corby was out of options, having been told her heavily tumoured leg couldn’t be amputated and to prepare for palliative care.
But, in a complete turnaround, the Upper Hutt woman who has battled cancer for the past decade has been told by her Wellington clinical team that her leg will be removed today, following positive results from an MRI and chest X-ray. Corby, this week, met with an orthopaedic surgeon and an anaesthetist at Hutt Hospital to talk through the process as well as the serious risks involved with the operation.
Her adult children, who have been with her every step of the cancer journey, are understandably nervous about the risky surgery, but on board with their mother’s wishes.
The plan is to amputate above Corby’s right knee where she currently has several large neuroendocrine tumours. It’s a surgery that comes with significant risk, with a 40 to 50 per cent survival rate.
The sizeable masses, which have been growing since 2009, have left the 62-year-old wheelchair-bound and completely reliant on family for day-to-day help.
While she had previously been offered the option of amputation, it had always been something she saw as a last resort. ‘‘I’ve had 55 chemo[therapy] treatments ... then they wanted to amputate my leg, and at the time when I was having all that chemo I said ‘no’ because I thought that what they were doing was going to downsize the tumour,’’ she said.