However, what she thought would be a routine bowel cancer check shattered her expectations, leaving the Omakau mother and her four children to face up to a grim prognosis.
"It’s a sneaky disease; it can grow away inside you without you knowing," she said.
"It’s hard to get your head around and get a grasp on how this might happen."
June is bowel cancer awareness month, and this year Bowel Cancer New Zealand is highlighting the fact that the disease can affect both young and old.
"We were aware there was a family history but you have this thought in the back of your mind that cancer is an old person’s disease," Mrs McLeod (41) said.
"In your early 40s you think that’s not an option; you might go to the doctor and get tested in your 50s or 60s, not now."
Mrs McLeod’s brother, Paddy Beck (44), had shown symptoms of possible bowel cancer for a few months, before enough bleeding episodes enabled him to convince his doctor that he should be tested last year.
A confirmed diagnosis was followed by rapid and successful treatment of the disease, and a suggestion from his surgeon that family members should also be checked.
"On November 1, I went in for a colonoscopy thinking it was just something that I would tick off the list," Mrs McLeod said.
"But I actually saw the tumour while the procedure was going on — if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have believed my diagnosis and prognosis."
Mrs McLeod’s surgeon told her the cancer had spread, had an aggressive mutation, and was incurable.
"Even now I don’t have any alarming symptoms ... if Paddy hadn’t have found his cancer, I wouldn’t have found mine," she said.
"Knowing now has given me the chance to make life more memorable, and to have conversations with people that I might not have had because you know time is precious and you have to make the most of it."
This week, the national bowel screening programme restarts and health authorities are urging people who received one of the 29,000 screening test kits sent out just before or during the Covid-19 Alert Level 4 lockdown to complete the test and send it back.
“The kits have a six-month expiry date," programme clinical director Susan Parry said.
"These tests can help detect early bowel cancers and they really do save lives.
"At this time of heightened awareness, this is a positive and proactive thing people can do for their health."
Of those who return a positive test, 92% do not have bowel cancer, but the experience of the McLeod family highlights the need for those at risk, who are symptomatic or who have a family history of the disease to consider being tested.
"Have those awkward conversations, talk about it and what the symptoms are, so people know what they are and what to look out for," Mrs McLeod said.
"Get it before it can get you."
