Kia ora, I’m Sariah Nesbit. I’m a mum to two beautiful girls: Mahalia-June (5) and Amāia (3).

Just before everything changed, I’d started studying law at the University of Auckland. I was chasing my dream of becoming a lawyer, and life felt full, busy in a good way.

In the weeks leading up to my diagnosis, I was struggling to eat. For about a month, it was hard to keep food down, and at first doctors thought it might be an eating disorder. It wasn’t.

I was diagnosed with stomach cancer on 12 March, my mum’s 45th birthday. I remember being in shock, but what I remember most is seeing tears in my mum’s eyes. That’s when it hit me, and I started crying too. When we decided to ask how long I had, we just broke down.

I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of stomach cancer. It had already spread to my lymph nodes and was attached to other key organs. It was classified as advanced stage and inoperable, and I was told I might have around a year, even with treatment. Overnight, everything changed.

My medical team recommended a combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy - treatment that could give me more time and a better quality of life. But the immunotherapy I needed wasn’t publicly funded, and I was told unfunded drugs couldn’t be given through the public hospital system. That meant the only way to access it was through the private system, with overwhelming costs.

So I set up a Givealittle page. As someone who likes to keep my struggles to myself, opening up like this has been incredibly hard, but I’m doing it for my girls. I want more time with them. More laughter. More memories. More life.

And then something happened that none of us dared to hope for. The treatment worked better than anyone expected. Scans later showed such a strong response that my medical team changed my stomach cancer status from “inoperable” to “operable”.

In October, I underwent major surgery to remove the primary tumour - a total gastrectomy. Out of 24 lymph nodes removed, the cancer was found in only one, and the main tumour was removed too.

The surgery was a huge milestone, but the fight isn’t over. My oncologists have recommended I continue immunotherapy for another six months — to mop up any microscopic cells left behind and protect this second chance at life I’ve been given. Because the drug is still unfunded, I need to raise $45,000 to complete the treatment.

I want to say thank you — to my whānau and friends, to my medical team, and to everyone who has supported me, shared my story, or sent a kind message. It really has felt like a big load of arms around me.

If you would like to support Sariah as she heads into her second round of immunotherapy, you can do so here: https://givealittle.co.nz/caus...