By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
SANDI Bonavita has been fighting cancer since 1997 … from the diagnosis to the operations, chemotherapy, tests and the agonising waiting game.
Sandi is now cancer free.
The good news came on Tuesday 14 April, after waiting four and a half months for the results in what has been an 18-year war.
Sandi says her illness would not be in the positive position it is without oral chemotherapy tablets, which were added to the pharmaceutical benefits scheme (PBS) just when she needed them.
“I am in remission but will have to stay on the tablets for the rest of my life or for as long as my body can tolerate them,” Sandi said.
Sandi had been undergoing regular chemotherapy – which wasn’t working – and started on the new drug in January.
“It’s just a blessing and a miracle that they came out on the PBS when I needed them,” she said.
“They were new to breast cancer patients and have put me into remission, they have dissolved the tumour so small that they can’t see it anymore, and in just four months,” she said.
Sandi takes two tablets a day and said her husband Martin has never missed a morning.
“Martin wakes me up at 6am in the morning for the first tablet, he’s been beautiful and in the last two years having chemotherapy twice and the surgeries and lung cancer and at my age you just don’t recover as much, and it’s really tough on the carers,” she said.
Last year Sandi and her team of six ladies raised more than $23,000 for the Peter Mac Cancer Research centre and have already started fundraising for the next event.
“Some of the stuff Peter Mac is discovering about women’s cancers is amazing and all the money raised goes to research. It’s my passion right now, I have to give something back after 18 years,” she said.
Sandi said although she’s cancer free she is not 100 per cent healthy.
“I am struggling with a lot of breathing problems, I can’t exert too much energy, we don’t know if it’s all the chemotherapy or a reaction to the drugs. I’m just so sick of all the battles, I hate feeling sick I just a want to get on with life and do things,” she said.
