Walking Gore to Riverton for bowel cancer awareness

Steph Rossiter will have walked as far as Riverton by the end of June but will not actually arrive in the seaside town.

The Riversdale woman is taking part in Bowel Cancer New Zealand’s Walk your Butt fundraiser.

It was not easy for her to walk from Riversdale to Riverton with a young family so she decided to walk around Riversdale every day and clock up the 115km distance between the two towns, Mrs Rossiter said.

Her mother Helen Hanna (61), of Gore died of bowel cancer in 2021. Riverton was ‘‘Mum’s happy place’’.

When she was 60-years-old her mother completed the bowel screening test but the result came back negative, she said.

‘‘I think that was kind of a false reassurance for her that that it wasn’t something malicious.’’

This caused her mother to ignore symptons which included pain and bleeding from the rectum.

‘‘She wrote off her symptons as haemorroids.’’

Mrs Rossiter believed it was important people took the test but for some unknown reason it did not pick up her mother had the disease.

When Mrs Hanna eventually went to the doctor and was diagnosed with cancer the initial prognosis was positive.

‘‘It started out with ‘we’ve caught it nice and early, it’s all contained, it’s curable’’’.

The plan was for Mrs Hanna to complete radiation, chemotherapy and surgery and she would recover.

Later the disease which was an aggressive form of cancer spread and 10 months later Mrs Hanna lost her battle with the disease.

Walking Sam (7) to school every day pushing Elli (eight months) was already part of Mrs Rossiter’s routine.

This added up to about 4km a day and at the weekends she went for longer walks to help reach the target.

‘‘I’ve been walking with a couple of friends which is nice.’’

Half way through the month she was on target to achieve the 115km and had raised about $2,600.

As well as fundraising Mrs Rossister hoped to increase awareness of the disease.

‘‘It’s just not something people talk about.’’

She was keeping people updated on her progress and posting information about bowel cancer on her social media page.

Exercising and eating less processed food were two ways people could reduce the risk of getting bowl cancer, she said.

 

sandy.eggleston@odt.co.nz

 

 

 

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