Delay in preventive surgery meant ’my cancer journey started when I thought it was meant to end’

A Melbourne teacher tried to eliminate her risk of cancer by opting for a preventive mastectomy but a delay in treatment meant she developed the condition while waiting.

Nicolette Neofitou developed breast cancer after waiting 10 months for a preventive mastectomy that was delayed by Australia's out of control public hospital waiting lists. Picture: Ian Currie

EXCLUSIVE

Nicolette Neofitou developed breast cancer after waiting 10 months for a preventive mastectomy that was delayed by a new phenomenon – waiting lists in private hospitals.

The Melbourne schoolteacher knew her BRCA genes meant she had a 72 per cent chance of developing breast cancer and she is one of 10 women who developed cancer while waiting for a mastectomy in the last six months, according to cancer prevention charity Pink Hope.

The charity will be in Parliament House, Canberra, on Wednesday to call on the federal health minister to stump up extra hospital funding to reduce public hospital waiting times, establish a genetic testing registry, and train more geneticists as Australia facing a looming workforce shortage.

Nicolette Neofitou with her fiance in NZ. They got engaged one month before her diagnosis. Picture: Supplied

Ms Neofitou “felt like my life had peaked” after returning from the holiday of her lifetime in late 2022.

“I got engaged on the trip, I had just gotten a job offer, I had just graduated from my master’s degree,” she said.

Then she received a devastating gut punch. Her annual MRI check showed she had developed aggressive triple negative breast cancer while waiting for the very surgery she had desperately sought to prevent that outcome.

Her surgery was originally scheduled for February 2022 in a private hospital but “a week or two before my surgery, they informed me that I wasn’t considered a priority case so they were going to reschedule it and it was pushed back to December”, she said.

Nicolette Neofitou with her Mum. Picture: Supplied

Both her mother and her aunt had developed breast cancer from the same gene fault that means carriers face a 72 per cent risk of the condition during their lifetime.

“I wanted to change history and change the course of my life, but the delay in surgery meant I had to face a future of chemotherapy and treatment. My cancer journey started when I thought it was meant to end,” Ms Neofitou said.

Four-year-old Nicolette Neofitou with her Mum, who shaved her head during her own cancer battle in 2002. Picture: Supplied

Nicolette Neofitou after her first round of chemotherapy in January. Picture: Supplied

While Neofitou’s 10-month wait for surgery was bad, it’s even worse for women using the public hospital system where there is an 18-month wait for the same surgery, Pink Hope CEO Sarah Powell told News Corp.

“This surgery is classed as elective which means it gets put at category three, it’s the absolute lowest categorisation,” Pink Hope CEO Sarah Powell told News Corp.

“We know of at least 10 women in our community across Australia who have been diagnosed with breast cancer while they wait for an elective prophylactic mastectomy to reduce their risk,” she said.

It’s personally devastating for the women who develop cancer during these surgery delays but it’s also highly costly for the health system.

“It’s so much more expensive to treat someone for cancer than to let them have this surgery and prevent themselves getting cancer,” Ms Powell said.

Breast cancer surgeon and chief medical officer of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre Dr David Speakman said “all breast units aim to operate on women who have a BRCA gene identified, in as timely a fashion as possible, being very aware of the psychological and medical risks that carrying a gene poses”.

Private hospitals told News Corp while some surgeries were delayed for several weeks due to Covid surgery bans in early 2022, there were no such delays now.

Health funds paid out for 247,015 fewer surgeries in 2022 than they did in 2021 when surgery bans were in effect.

Nicolette Neofitou said developing breast cancer “robbed me of having a carefree life in my twenties”. Picture: Ian Currie

“This diagnosis has absolutely destroyed everything. I’ve had to reschedule my engagement twice. I’ve had to go through IVF which is something that I never really considered doing. I’ve been put into early menopause which has been taken a huge toll on my body at 24 years old. It’s robbed me of having a carefree life in my twenties. Then you have that constant anxiety of when am I actually in the clear,” Ms Neofitou said.

Originally published as Delay in preventive surgery meant ’my cancer journey started when I thought it was meant to end’