Mona (Rangikaumoama) Davis

How needle prod from beyond the grave convinced cancer victim rogue cells were making a comeback.

As Mona Davis left the grave where her best friend’s mother had just been laid to rest she felt a needle-sharp prod in her right side.

She put it out of her mind until the prodding revisited her the next day and the next.

Instinctively she knew it was a portent, something she ignored at her peril. The last time she’d experienced anything similar was an icy cold feeling behind her right breast. The same chill had been the prelude to the cancer that claimed her mother’s life at 53.

With breast cancer rife in her whanau Mona wasn’t surprised when she too was given the same diagnosis and had a mastectomy in 2016. Despite a clear mammogram a year earlier a 7cm mass was discovered in her right breast after insisting her “cold boob” was telling a different story.

Could the prodding mean she was harbouring another possible tumour? Mona’s convinced it was.

“I said ‘okay mumsy, I always called her mumsy, let’s check this out’. She was prodding me from beyond the grave to get examined, I’m convinced that’s exactly what happened.” 

A specialist considered  a return of her cancer was unlikely but ordered a scan, it revealed a mass in the faux cleavage Mona had never wanted.

She scathingly claims it was thrust on her by the surgeon who performed her 2016  operation. “He did it simply because he thought I’d like it. It’s always been a bone of contention with me that I wasn’t consulted about something so personal and had always felt it robbed me of my dignity. 

“I didn’t ask for it, it left me feeling like a trussed up chicken, he just got a needle, pulled the skin together and stitched it up, it was hideous.

“When I hit him up about it he said ‘its okay we can do a reconstruction’, I refused, I’d had enough.

The operation that gave her that detested fake cleavage was followed by another six weeks later.

“At my check-up he [the surgeon] said ‘I’m so so sorry but we didn’t get all the cancer’ so there I was having operation number two.”

As we now know she still hadn’t kissed cancer good bye.

In March she had her third surgery to rid her body of it. “I firmly believe had it not been for mumsy’s prodding my cancer would have come back much worse than it actually was, because of her we caught it early.

“The surgeon I had this time took all the cancerous cells out, tidied up the awful old scarring and removed my fake cleavage. He’s done a very very good job and given me my dignity back.

Last month she began radiotherapy at Waikato Hospital but Mona being Mona she became caught up in the hospital’s major computer ransom hack, leading to a transfer to Wellington to continue treatment there.

“I‘m sure as hell going to beat this sucker.”

Matter of fact as she appears to be about her third round of  breast surgery the reality is Mona did need a bit of “me time” to adjust to the prospect of yet another invasive  procedure. She threw herself a ‘pity party’.

“I took a microphone, all my old songs, Mr James Beam and got rid of my frustrations. I sung my heart out, swam, paddled and swam in the water every day. It gave me time to buck up, tell myself shit happens and build a bridge to get over it.”

Mona suspects one reason the cancer did return was because she had to go off her medication because of a pending knee operation.

This isn’t a woman who does things by halves, she had two knee replacements last year, three months apart.

 She needed the first after tearing her meniscus (knee cartilage). “I tripped on a parking dome, one of those thingies that registered how long drivers stayed in one spot, they don’t work any more so I wonder why the council’s kept them.”  

With her bones weakened by her cancer treatment Mona reached a point where she could barely walk. When Covid delayed her scheduled op her other knee rapidly deteriorated meaning it was unable to support its opposite number.

Her second round of knee surgery took an hour longer than predicted because of the aftermath of a previous injury.

“I tore it [knee] apart in my 30s when I tried to jump the fence to get from the marae to my place. I had to have more than 30 stitches.”

Accidents and health issues have dogged her since she had her tonsils out at seven.

“I woke up before I was meant to. There was blood everywhere.”

An outdoors child, she was in and out of hospital being treated for bee stings.

“Then there was the time I nearly cut my foot off. I was running at full speed to get something out of the car, it was dark, there was a lot of glass around.”    

Jumping out of a moving car while arguing with “some bloke” put her in hospital. “They had to attach my heel back on.”  

 Her next visit was for something more mundane – if giving birth can ever be called mundane – most certainly not where Mona’s concerned.

She and her husband were living in Kaingaroa when her oldest daughter chose to arrive in haste. 

“Half way to Rotorua I said ‘stop stop’ and got in the back seat, my husband was saying ‘don’t wet or dirty the car’.

“By the time we got to Waipa contractions were a minute apart.  I jumped in the front,   screaming at my husband ‘does something’. He said ‘What’? I said sing. He sung to me down Fenton St right up to the hospital, I gave birth while he was parking.”

Her second baby arrived after a 40 minute labour and another dash from Kaingaroa. “I practically delivered her at the hospital door.”

All her children were in a rush to meet the world. Identical twin boys arrived at 25 weeks gestation, one weighed in at 900 grams the other topped that by 100 grams. Their mum, who was supposed to be on bed rest, had just farewelled their father at Auckland airport, he was off on a Ngongotaha Rugby Club world tour when she began to contract. Three hospitals turned Mona away, first Pukekohe then Middlemore. “They sent me to National Women’s but they didn’t have any specialised incubator cribs so I was raced to Waikato. The labour was too far advanced to stop with drugs. I had to try and hold the boys up there because it was too early for them to come out.”

The boys had other thoughts and refused to stay put, they were delivered by emergency caesarean. “The staff took a photograph of them for me to see when I woke up in case they didn’t survive.”

Advising their father of their untimely arrival belongs to the “it could only happen to Mona” school of drama .

“He was in France, it wasn’t taking calls from New Zealand because it was soon after the Rainbow Warrior bombing. An Australian operator had to let him know he had twin boys.”

The boys came out of hospital after a four months, arriving home the size of most new-borns.

She unashamedly admits she wrestled mentally with caring for four children under five and needed medical help. I said to the doctor I’m having these out of body experiences, I’m cracking up, he agreed and got me home help so I could go to the gym and get my life back together.” 

Add two miscarriages to Mona’s list of her life’s challenges, one before the twins’ birth, one after it. “With the first one it was too early to tell the gender, when the twins came I saw them as my gift for losing that baby.”

The second time she miscarried the foetus was more advanced and another boy. “We named him Te Ngahe, [Nelson] and buried him in our garden. That was 34 years ago, he’s now a flourishing lemon tree.”

Her eyes and mouth haven’t escaped her medical encyclopaedia of health setbacks. “I’ve had iritis, (irritation of the eyes) where I was seeing psychedelic flashing lights and I lost a tooth for every child I’ve carried.”

All pretty sobering stuff yet extrovert Mona remains as bouncy as a burrow full of  Energizer bunnies.

After each of her surgeries she’s been back at Copies Etc within two to three weeks. She’s managing director with a staff of one “It’s totally unfair of me to expect her to carry the load while I swan around hospitals.”

The welfare of others is foremost in her thoughts. In 2016 she was joint poster girl for the Cancer Society’s local Pink Ribbon Walk; she completed it in a wheelchair. A year later she skydived from 1500 feet as a fundraiser for the society. “They are wonderful, they really are.”   

Mona’s borderline dismissive of her own tribulations. 

“I’m so blessed that I am one of the chosen ones, I think I am unique.”

“You can’t dwell on whether you have deserved or not deserved what’s happened to you, it’s just the way the cards are dealt.”

“You can choose to be negative, woe is me, but I choose to be happy, I choose to love this life and live it to the fullest. Life is for living, giving, loving just get out there and do it.”