Claire's cancer crisis ‘I WAS CRYING EVERY DAY'

The actress reveals the health scare that almost destroyed her latest project

For 20 years, Claire Chitham had been free from the symptoms of the autoimmune disease that had plagued her youth, but as 2020 brought lockdowns, a death in the family and her mother’s cancer diagnosis, the actress feared a devastating relapse of the inflammatory bowel condition.

Chatting to Woman’s Day in a bustling Auckland café, the former Shortland Street and Outrageous Fortune star, 42, says it was a cruel irony that she was writing a book about her experience of beating Crohn’s disease at the time.

“My guts were a mess and I freaked out,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘This is the universe’s way of saying you’re a bloody idiot – you’ve written a book about how you healed your Crohn’s and now you’ve given yourself the disease again!’”

Claire’s year would have tested most people. Already stressed about meeting publishing deadlines amid a pandemic, she and co-author Kylie Bailey had just pressed “send” on the draft for their wellness book Good For You when Claire’s aunt died following a long illness.

“My auntie passed away on a Thursday, we managed to have the funeral on a Monday and two days later, we went back into lockdown.”

But it was the call from her 67-year-old mother Melanie a few days later that really shook Claire’s world. “She was like, ‘So, I’ve got some news. It seems I’ve got a bit of cancer.’ She was very pragmatic and trying not to make us panic.”

A surgery date was scheduled for four weeks later, but scans showed the tumour in her uterus was more aggressive than first thought. She was told she should have surgery as soon as Auckland came out of lockdown.