A husband and wife diagnosed with lung cancer within months of each other are crowd funding extra treatments to stay alive as long as they can for their young sons.
Graham and Mery Brooke-Smith with their two sons. Photo: Supplied / Givealittle
Doctors cannot explain how Graham and Mery Brooke-Smith both have the disease.
The non-smokers, who live healthy lives, have been given less than a year to live without treatment.
The couple is having funded treatment like chemotherapy, but want to raise money for other options like immunotherapy that could give them more time with their young sons who are nine and 11.
"When I first heard my diagnosis, that was bad enough," Graham told Checkpoint.
"My initial response was that at least the kids have their mother and we could set things up ... so that they can live happy lives without me."
But then his wife Mery was diagnosed too.
"That all came crashing down very quickly, and the odds were just out of this world ... having lightning strike twice at the same time. It was just tragic.
"I wasn't stoic then. I cried my eyes out to be honest and so did Mery, we just didn't know what to do.
"It's just been amazing how much the community has really come forward and just helped us out with meals and and working bees and stuff like that.
"We're very grateful for that."
He said the pair worried about the children becoming orphaned.
But family friends with children had offered to adopt the boys, should it come to that.
"It's been a huge relief and such a blessing to us to know that they won't simply go to the state and that'll be their lives in foster care. That's been a huge miracle for us, and so we're very grateful to them for that."
When he was diagnosed, he was told he had six months to live without treatment and more than four years with treatment.
"But the treatment that was offered was not funded by Pharmac. So I really needed to have the funds for that. But then when Mery was diagnosed ... we we're looking at over $100,000 each. My treatment costs $11,000 a month and it's one pill every day, and that will last for a year.
"And my wife's treatments will be similar where she'd get chemotherapy, but alongside that she'd get immunotherapy and her diagnosis was 'you have six months without treatment, two years with chemo or immunotherapy with that chemo then four plus years' like mine."
The family was looking to raise $210,000 for both for the first 12 months.
