The silent killer: Two months from diagnosis to death

Monday, 4 March 2024

There were no warning signs, just a niggling pain in the side that began last October, but within eight weeks of learning she had bowel cancer, Jade Blackman died. NADINE ROBERTS talks to a father who is struggling to comprehend how a silent killer wrecked his daughter’s future, and a mother who wants answers.

Lost, Alan Kenney goes to work but finds himself weeping through-out the day. At night he barely sleeps because Jade, his only child’s last days are stuck in his head on constant replay.

He’s hollow, tetchy and weary of seeing friends. Nothing makes sense any more.

And then there’s the beginnings of anger.

“She was just so healthy…” Alan draws on his smoke and wipes his eyes. “It’s a silent killer, isn’t it? Quite horrendous.”

His eyes drift away in the silence, as he thinks about the cruelty of a disease that took his daughter and her dreams.

“He’s a wreck,” Jade’s mother, and Alan’s ex-wife, Angela Fuller, says. “She was his entire world … they were so close.”

At 44 years old, the Forsyth Barr investment adviser seemingly had it all. Financially and personally successful, with a fiancé and a daughter, Jade was sought after for wellbeing advice - and presented at an Inspire Me Women conference in Christchurch last August.

She had worked hard to have her own properties, starting out as a private banker at ANZ for 12 years before becoming an investment adviser for Craigs Investment Partners where she became a registered financial adviser.

It wasn’t long before Forsyth Barr offered her a job.

“She excelled at everything,” Alan says proudly. “This was to be her big year.”

Set for a promotion at work, and a wedding, followed by a honeymoon in Mexico in 2024, she wasn’t prepared for a seemingly innocuous pain to be a doorway to her own mortality.

It began last October when a doctor thought the pain she was experiencing might be gastritis and sent her away with medication to ease it.

But the pain continued, so a few weeks later doctors conducted a scan.

“They said she might hear from them, she might not … but 10 minutes after she drove away they rang and asked her to come back in,” Alan recalls.

Jade was told she had stage four bowel cancer that had spread to her liver and her lungs. Radiotherapy was not an option.

She fainted.

“She said, ‘I’m sorry…’,” Alan's voice wavers as he begins again. “She said, ‘I’m sorry I’m sick,’ and I responded, ‘Don’t say that - there’s nothing you can do about it’.”

Determined to fight it for as long as possible, Jade didn’t want to know how long she had left, but her rapid decline soon indicated it would be faster than anybody expected.

“I call it turbo cancer,” Alan says, outside the Christchurch home she bought him not long before she got sick. “It was just unbelievable that it was just that quick.”

His shock was compounded by the knowledge his daughter appeared to be in perfect health up until she was diagnosed. She was fit, and had a nutritious diet. “You wouldn’t know she was ill.”

Worryingly, especially for young healthy women - there were almost no indicators and no history of bowel cancer in the family.

By December, Jade was deteriorating and Alan could only see her for twenty minutes at a time, because she had no energy. Her body, he says, was shrinking before his eyes.

It soon became apparent that this would be the last Christmas she would have with her family.

Alan says he didn’t wish his daughter a Happy New Year on January 1 - instead his words became guarded, and careful.

Realising time was running out, Jade and fiancé Hamish Blackman planned to wed on January 19 in Christchurch instead of the original date of January 26 in Nelson.

But Jade was fading fast, so they rushed the wedding forward to January 3.

Alan’s thankful he got to walk his weakened princess down the aisle, and took comfort in knowing that she was able to get married. He made a short speech after the ceremony, but painfully couldn’t wish her all the best for the future.

It’s all very difficult to comprehend now. “She had never found the right man over the years,” he shakes his head. “And then she finally found him and it all got stolen away.”

For Angela, watching her daughter have to lie on her bed to have her make-up put on, and struggle to get dressed was tough, especially as this was meant to be a dream wedding for the perfectly matched couple.

“Theirs was a love story,” she says. “We always said she had kissed a few frogs but it was actually a hamster she needed (Hamish’s nickname) … She was determined to marry that man.”

On the day Jade had to rest every 10 minutes, and was seated during her vows. Afterwards she was so exhausted she lay on the couch in her wedding dress. Even so, those attending still couldn’t believe how sick she was, because she looked bronzed and beautiful.

“It wasn’t the wedding of her dreams,” Angela says. “It was just so, so sad.”

Jade spent her last days at a hospice, on heavy medication to control her pain. She wasn’t able to communicate, although Alan believes she could still hear him.

Just eight days after her wedding, Jade Blackman died at 5.15pm on January 11.

“She was a fighter,” her father says, “but you couldn’t fight this.”

Alan stayed with her overnight, never leaving her bedside until she was taken away the next day. Letting her go for that last time was traumatic.

On the day Jade had planned to originally get married in Nelson, Alan and Angela and a small group went to the venue, drank champagne and shared memories of their daughter.

Now, Alan visits Jade’s grave every day and talks to her, but his grief is exhausting - something Angela is helping him with as they both broach the future without their daughter.

In her last months, Jade told her father she was worried about him - and how he would cope when she was gone. It was typical of her kind and generous nature to think of others before herself, according to Alan, but remembering that moment brings him to tears.

“It was very cruel. She didn’t deserve that. It feels like it was really unfair when she was at the best stage of her life.”

Angela agrees. She’s made it her mission to find out the root causes of Jade's cancer, and encourage young women to get thoroughly checked if they have any concerns.

After being diagnosed, Jade revealed to her mum that she had experienced a pain in her right hand side for quite a few years, but never got a doctor to check it out. Now Angela wonders if it was related - as the cancer was on the same side.

Subsequent conversations with Jades' oncologist revealed the size of one of the tumours suggested it had taken between five and 10 years to get to that size, causing her to regret not getting a colonoscopy sooner.

“So any niggle, don’t ignore it,” Angela warns. “Go to the doctor, get a second opinion if you need to. Listen to your body.”

Jade had a particular type of bowel cancer called BRAF which her oncologist told Angela was “ripping through” young outwardly fit and healthy people. At the same time the oncologist was dealing with Jade, she had 12 others with the same type of bowel cancer, in the same age bracket.

Now, Angela wants to know why.

She wonders if the body masks the disease in fit young adults like Jade - who went to the gym six times a week, as opposed to older people who aren’t as mobile.

Although it won’t bring her “bouncy gorgeous astute” daughter back, she’s devoted to finding answers, in the hope that it will save lives.

“I don’t want young people tragically taken like our amazing daughter.”

She’s not the only one. From beyond the grave, former Stuff journalist Jo McKenzie-McLean’s efforts to tell her story, in the hope that it might help others is still making an impact.

Just 45 when she died from bowel cancer last July, McKenzie McLean devoted much of her last year of life to recording a podcast, Jo v Cancer, to reduce stigma and encourage discussions around the disease.

Fate was cruel to McKenzie-McLean.

After a two-year battle with her doctor, despite irregular bowel movements, and an uncle and nana who both had bowel cancer, she was finally diagnosed.

But it was too late. By then her cancer was too advanced to treat.

According to Bowel Cancer New Zealand, three New Zealanders die from bowel cancer every day and it’s the second highest cause of cancer death.

Of those, one in 10 will be under 50.

“It’s coming from somewhere,” Alan shakes his head, as he looks sadly at photos of his daughter, “but I just have no idea where.”