Christine Crupi was on a holiday with her family at 40 when she developed what she described as worsening ‘urinary tract infection symptoms’.
Always a stickler for health following her mum’s untimely death from breast cancer at 48, Christine had been having regular tests since 25 and knew all the signs to look out for.
Little did she know, she was looking in all the wrong places.
When Christine started to feel a little bloated and the need to urinate more often than usual, she put it down to a UTI. It was nothing to worry about…. or so she thought.
The symptoms worsened on her holiday so she visited a local GP who agreed she likely had the infection so did a quick test and sent her off with some antibiotics.
Two days later Christine, a lawyer, received a phone call from her doctor who asked ‘how she was feeling’ before revealing the test was negative.
‘He told me I didn’t have an infection and I got worried,’ Christine told FEMAIL.
The GP couldn’t say without further testing so booked Christine in for a pelvic ultrasound.
Christine Crupi was on a holiday with her family at 40 when she developed what she described as worsening ‘urinary tract infection symptoms’
‘The tone was like “let’s do a test in case something else is going on, it could still be a UTI”,’ she recalled.
Never one to delay tests, Christine found a clinic who could do the scan the next day. It was there she knew it was worse than she thought.
‘The moment I saw the sonographer’s face I knew something was wrong but of course they couldn’t tell me anything because the images have to go through the reporting stage,’ Christine explained.
‘I asked what organ was he looking at and he told me he was looking at the ovaries. I came to my own conclusion from that.’
In a turn of events nobody had ever predicted, Christine had ovarian cancer at just 40.
Christine said that despite her hyper-vigilance around cancer the diagnosis hit her ‘like a tonne of bricks’.
The mum had barely got to the surgery carpark with her dad and husband before she began calling gynecological oncologists; she also booked in a CT scan for the following morning.
By the time she headed in for a scan she had been given a recommendation for, and booked in with Dr Deb Nation.
She is pictured here on their first family holiday following her surgery and chemo
‘I had an appointment with her that night. The speed was overwhelming but I felt like one of the lucky ones,’ she said.
She had the resources to pay our of pocket for care and was fortunate to lock in appointments swiftly.
‘She booked me in for the biopsy and full hysterotomy surgery all at once. She said that they would do keyhole first and check it out then, with my prior consent, take out what they needed to,’ she said.
Christine went into surgery not knowing what she would wake up to. What she didn’t expect was a stage three diagnosis and to be placed into chemical menopause.
‘I only had symptoms for six weeks but the cancer had already attached to the outside of my liver,’ the mum said.
If she had delayed treatment or her doctor hadn’t been thorough she would have been in a very different, and likely terminal, situation.
Christine never wanted to ‘look sick’ in front of her children so kept up appearances throughout the treatment process
She spent her 41st birthday in a hospital room
Christine was given 11 days to recover from the major surgery before she started chemotherapy. She was also determined to not look sick in front of her children.
‘I had to grow up very quickly with a sick mum, and there was a lot of fear for my kids around that,’ she said.
Christine didn’t know about her mum’s illness ‘the first time’ but did once it came back.
‘I was grateful she was a role model to me, hiding how sick she was when I was young, I knew I had to do the same,’ she recalled.
On good days, Christine would drag herself out of bed, pop on her wig and drop her children off at school and take them to their extracurricular activities.
On bad days she would spend the whole day they were at school on the couch, then drag herself up to do things when they got home.
‘They still noticed something was not right,’ she said.
After chemo Christine gained ‘compassionate access’ to another drug which should keep her cancer, caused by the Rad51C gene at bay.
The drug usually costs $11,000 a week and unlike drugs for the BRCA gene is not on the PBS.
Christine was always hyper vigilant about breast cancer but was diagnosed with ovarian cancer instead
Christine hopes people can learn about other genetic mutations like the Rad51C gene which are strongly linked to breast and ovarian cancers.
‘I spent my whole life looking for breast cancer and didn’t realise there was such a strong link between that and ovarian cancer,’ she said.
‘I wish I had known so I could have been on the lookout, known the signs, so I wouldn’t have to have spent so long second guessing what I missed or wondering why I wasn’t in tune with my body enough to know I had cancer.’
The gene can impact men and women, so when her children become adults she will advise them to get screened for it straight away.
Christine has blood tests every three months and other screening tests every year to insure she is across any changes or potential cancer growths before they get any worse.
She wants to learn from her mother, who beat her cancer only for it to come back years later and take her life far too young.