Janelle Brunton-Rennie

I'm running 100km in April to help bring life-saving CAR T-cell therapy home to NZ!

A little over seven years ago my husband Kurt died of Blood Cancer. At the time he was diagnosed we had a four month old daughter, less than a year after his diagnosis he was gone. When chemotherapy failed, we were told we had no other treatment options left. We had researched CAR-T immunotherapy which wasn't yet available in New Zealand and worked tirelessly to get Kurt to Boston (a distance of 14,500km) on a CAR-T trial. The costs were huge, not only was he away from the comfort of home and family for those final months of his life, but the stress, the travel and the costs of the American hospital system made it an incredibly challenging experience, on top of what was already a living nightmare. 

CAR-T treatment has progressed immensely, and I saw first hand what incredibly powerful results it can achieve. Every day, seven New Zealanders are diagnosed with blood cancer. It comes completely out of nowhere, and shakes your entire existence to the core. I want to try to ensure that all New Zealanders have access to ground breaking immunotherapy treatment right here in New Zealand, without the additional hurdles of travel, living abroad, and certainly without the hundreds of thousands of dollars of treatment costs attached to it. 

I'm honoured to be a part of the Go-The-Distance campaign, fundraising to help bring CAR-T therapy to hospitals across New Zealand. I'm going the distance, so that you and your favourite humans won't have to.