Clinical staff valuable asset

Last year, I became a statistic, the one out of every nine women in New Zealand who experiences breast cancer in their lifetime.

I was recalled after a routine mammogram which most likely has saved my life as I did not feel any lump at the time.

Can I please encourage your readers to make the most of the opportunity we have in New Zealand to avail yourself of free mammograms.

I shudder when I hear of women in the eligible age group who do not put up with perhaps a minute's discomfort of a mammogram, which could prevent them from dying from this far too common disease.

Now I have finished the majority of treatment, I would like to applaud those who participated in my journey, starting from the breast screening service, the oncology and radiotherapy teams, the wonderful breast care nurses and my breast surgeon at Dunedin Public Hospital, not to mention the awesome district nurses at Balclutha hospital, where I had chemotherapy.

This has not been a journey I would have chosen but their care and compassion has been a blessing that I have been privileged to receive.

I ask the management of the Otago District Health Board not to fix what is not broken.

Please value your clinical staff - they are your most precious resource.

I also was privileged to stay at the Cancer Society house in Dunedin, which was an important place of rest and home away from home, not to mention an opportunity to meet folk from all across the country who have been touched by cancer .

I am so thankful that all of these people have made my experience of cancer one where I have felt valued and cared for as a whole person.

My prayer is that God will continue to bless the work that they do.

I also would like to encourage those who can to support in any way research that can find a cure for this disease that can strike healthy women unexpectedly.

Christine Burgin
Clinton

- In recognition of the importance of readers' contribution to the letters page, the newspaper each week selects a Letter of the Week, with a book prize courtesy of Dunedin publisher Longacre Press.

This week's winner, Christine Burgin, of Clinton, receives a copy of James Norcliffe's The Loblolly Boy, Longacre Press, $19.99.