A builder’s fatal missed cancer result, and his remarkable farewell tour to see friends

Saturday, 12 April 2025

Days after Mike Prujean was diagnosed with melanoma there came another shock - the skin cancer had been detected when he had a mole removed 10 years earlier, but he was never told. After being given months to live, the 41-year-old began an epic cycling tour, criss-crossing New Zealand to farewell friends and family. Nicholas Jones reports.

The trainee nurse excising a mole on Mike Prujean’s ribcage made such a mess - “like a stab wound gone wrong,” he says - that when the same site itched a decade later his GP thought it was trapped pus.

The lump grew and became painful. Finally, in October 2021 the Hawke’s Bay doctor agreed to drain the abscess, an expected 5 minute procedure under local anaesthetic.

“When she opened me up she went dead silent,” says Prujean, a 41-year-old builder. “She blunted three scalpels, and took 45 minutes cutting it all off my ribcage.”

Three days later he was told the tumour was cancerous - he had melanoma, a dangerous skin cancer that can spread rapidly to other organs, but is survivable if found early.

Prujean’s disease had been detected early - testing of the tissue taken when he had the mole removed by a trainee nurse in September 2011, had confirmed it was cancerous.

However, the medical centre south of Auckland, where he lived at the time, never communicated the results, he says. He’d had cancer for 10 years without knowing.

(The clinic told Stuff it couldn’t comment on what happened, including because staff involved had left, but it extended its “deepest sympathies” and would review the case.)

Prujean barely had time to process the oversight - within two weeks he was in Hastings Hospital having “six or so inches” cut from around his chest. Doctors also dissected lymph nodes, for any indication his cancer had spread.

They were stunned to find no evidence of that, he says, given the years he’d unknowingly lived with the disease.

“The doctor said, ‘Mate, you should have been dead five years ago.’”

The medical team lodged a treatment injury claim with ACC that explained, “Mr Prujean didn’t get followed up in 2011, therefore no further treatment which led to recurrence [of melanoma] in 2021”, and his GP discussed an official complaint. He moved on, however.

“Whoever missed the email, these things happen - I never blamed anyone, I never got angry about it … I was like, ‘No harm, no foul’. I lived through it.”

He and Kady continued with life, she working as a hairdresser and he as a builder’s apprentice, after a career change from running his own kitchen construction company.

In November 2023 he felt pain in his groin area. The keen runner was training for an Iron Man, and thought he’d pulled a muscle.

The pain persisted, however, and eventually he struggled to walk, felt nauseous and couldn’t keep food down - on building sites he’d “sit down with the boys having lunch, go outside and throw it all up, then go back to work”.

Over eight months he says he made repeat inquiries of his local Hawke’s Bay GP, he says, but was told he likely had early onset arthritis.

At the time Kady worked in Auckland, and on weekends the couple often met halfway in Taupō. They sought a second opinion there, but faced a six week wait for an MRI.

The crisis point came in Taupō on the weekend of May 12, 2024. Prujean was meant to start the drive back to Hawke’s Bay at 3am, but was up until midnight throwing up, and couldn’t rise until 7am.

He vomited in the shower, and Kady insisted: they were going to the A&E. A CT scan revealed Stage 4 cancer, in his liver, lungs, stomach and hips (which is why he struggled to walk). Later scans found it in his brain. After a days-long wait at Rotorua Hospital an oncologist sat them down.

“He said, ‘Mate, go home, get your affairs in order, say goodbye to all your family and friends, you won’t see Christmas,’” Prujean says, his voice catching at the memory.

He began immunotherapy and targeted brain radiation. Kady amended his nickname from Hobbles to Patches, after clumps of his hair fell out. Friends and family fundraised for the unfunded immunotherapy drug Ipilimumab.

The couple approached the White Matter Brain Cancer Trust, which gives grants to patients. He requested a pushbike.

“They asked, ‘Why do you want a bicycle?’, because it’s normally an overseas holiday or something. I said, ‘I want to go around the country and say goodbye to my family and friends.’”

That sense of adventure, positivity and stubborn determination were attributes that drew Kady to her husband, who she met through mutual friends in 2009.

They have maintained a respect for each others’ independence: Kady spending time training and riding horses, Prujean disappearing for a week or two to hunt, mountaineer or tramp.

Still, her husband’s plan to bike the country was confronting.

“But you have to think, ‘Who am I to tell him he can’t do something, when he’s been told he’s going to die?’”

The tumours in his hips made walking uncomfortable, but the pain was bearable on the bike. There were other challenges, however. A brain tumour pressed on his optical nerve, causing intense headaches that would blur his vision and cause confusion.

He felt such an episode coming on after setting out alone for his first day of riding.

“I sat it out, and carried on. I got to Ninety Mile Beach and couldn’t remember who I was - I couldn’t remember how to put my tent up, how to start my cooker … I lit it, and there was this massive fireball.

“I just ended up going to bed. I woke up at 1am, and everything had come back to me.”

Prujean cycled through Kaipara, Auckland, around the Coromandel Peninsula and East Cape, cut inland at Wairoa, and met the Tasman Sea again at Awakino.

He followed the coast around Mt Taranaki, passed south of Tongaririo to Napier, before reaching Wellington.

Each month he flew back for immunotherapy in Rotorua, which became so gruelling he considered stopping treatment. After days in bed, he’d force himself up - and his spirits reliably lifted when back on his bike.

He kept his medical team in the dark about his trip (doctors advised against physical exertion as tumours made his hips at risk of fracture), until scans showed a surprise reduction in his cancer.

“They said, ‘Whatever you’re doing is really working.’ I said, ‘Well, actually, by the way, I’m halfway down the country.’”

Kady (also gifted a bike by the trust) joined him for cycling legs, as did his brother and older sister, Millie Reeve, a dairy farmer from Whitianga, who biked from there to nearby Whenuakite.

“We had a lot of laughs, and just rode and talked,” she says. “When I watched him ride off towards Tairua, that was a bit emotional.”

Mike updated supporters on social media, and strangers gave him cash, meals, a bed for the night or place to store his bike.

In Auckland he stopped for a coffee at the St Heliers home of Will Curd, a close friend from his 20s who he hadn’t seen for years.

“He got to meet my kids…the fact he’s dealing with this massive illness, he takes that in his stride. It certainly wasn’t a morbid catch-up about, ‘This is the last time I’ll see you,’” Curd says.

“It was just mates catching up for a coffee, like we’d seen each other last week, and like we were going to see each other next week.”

Prujean’s South Island journey wound through Golden Bay, crossed Lewis Pass to Canterbury, headed back west over Arthur’s Pass, followed the Haast River to the tip of Lake Wānaka, and reached Queenstown via the Cardrona Valley.

Kady joined him for the last 425km to Bluff, past Lake Te Anau and Manapouri. After long days they’d find a watering hole. “We may have turned it into a nine day pub crawl,” Kady says.

The terminus was Stirling Point, overlooking Bluff Harbour and Foveaux Strait. His August 2024 to January 2025 trip had tallied to almost twice the length of New Zealand, and 59,000m of elevation.

They hugged and cried, overcome with pride and happiness, but also uncertainty.

“We think this trip has been a huge influence on Mike’s recovery. Safe to say he’s scared to stop,” Kady wrote on Facebook.

“A trip I’ll never forget and I didn’t want to end … I can’t thank Mike enough for being so resilient and strong for me, himself, his family and friends and everyone who has his back … making lemons into lemonade.”

Prujean’s next three-monthly scan is this Monday. The following Saturday he turns 42 - a milestone he wasn’t expected to reach.

He’s kept up the adventuring, including a glacier training course on Aoraki Mount Cook. More trips are planned, but a limitation is the financial strain caused by his illness.

Adding to the stress has been dealing with ACC. It took the voluntary advocacy of Jenn Hooper, who has helped hundreds of families affected by poor health care, for them to realise his entitlements and get these paid.

An ongoing dispute regards the $620 weekly compensation Prujean receives. This doesn’t fairly reflect his previous income, the couple say, and the “lengthy and invasive” back-and-forth with ACC - often involving their accountant - has been traumatic.

“My tax bill is higher than what they've offered me for a year,” Prujean says.

In March they requested a review from ACC, which can take six months. They have moved in with Kady’s parents in Waiau Pa, Pukekohe, and Prujean is considering returning to some work - which would require stopping treatments - to pay their bills. They also have a Give-a-little.

ACC’s deputy chief executive of service delivery, Michael Frampton, told Stuff the weekly compensation was calculated on 2024 earnings, which were similar to prior years, and which Prujean subsequently amended to a higher amount.

Information provided by Prujean in response to ACC questions didn’t explain the increased earnings, Frampton said, but the agency would consider any more detailed financial evidence.

“I can understand how frustrating and tiring this process might have felt for Mike and Kady, given everything else they’ve been dealing with. Mike has a dedicated case manager to help him with his injury-related needs.”

Prujean says he’s heard from other small business owners who have had to “fight and fight to get any leeway with ACC”, and highlighting that difficulty is a motivation for this article.

Another is to ensure people know that “no news is good news” doesn’t apply to medical results.

“That’s my public service announcement - make the phone call,” Prujean says.