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Samoan bodybuilder battling breast cancer thought she was 'too fit' to get sick

Miriam Fuimaono, was diagnosed with breast cancer two months after she turned 40 this year.

An Auckland bodybuilder who thought she was too fit and healthy to get sick is warning women, especially Pasifika women, to pay attention to their health after she battled cancer this year.

Miriam Fuimaono, 40, describes herself as a gym enthusiast, working out daily without fail – sometimes twice a day – for the past three years, as she competed on the figure bodybuilding stage.

She used to work out so hard that pulling a muscle or getting injured became normal to her.

So when she noticed a dimple under her left breast in her bathroom mirror in March, she didn’t think too much of it and carried on with her day.

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Fuimaono, centre, on stage at a bodybuilding competition in 2019.

She had also just turned 40 a few months earlier and felt she was at her healthiest, so was too fit to get sick.

“I remember sitting on what I saw for a couple of days after I saw it, then on a whim I decided to look up the Breast Cancer Foundation,” the east Aucklander said.

“The signs told me that I needed to get it checked.”

Fuimaono booked an appointment with her general practitioner a week later and it was confirmed that she had a cancerous lump on her breast.

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Fuimaono said her son Nate, family and her friends at LivFit Health in Onehunga have been supporting her in her cancer journey.

After a mammogram and an ultrasound, a doctor told her the most-dreaded news – there wasn’t just one tumour, there were two.

“It was stage two [cancer], I didn’t know much about cancer but I’m so glad that we caught it early. It’s been a really bizarre year, not just on the physical side, but my mental and emotional wellbeing, took a bit of a hammering.”

During lockdown in April, she underwent a mastectomy and reconstruction on her left breast but the cancer cells had spread.

Fuimaono underwent four rounds of chemotherapy, the last part of her mastectomy reconstruction and while she is presumed to have beaten cancer, ongoing treatment has taken a lot out of her.

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Fuimaono wants people to know that despite beating cancer, the ongoing treatment and its effect on her body has been devastating.

“There’s this misconception that once you go through the chemo and the surgery that’s it, but there’s the ongoing treatment and a lot of people don’t realise this. It’s a very long journey.”

She hopes and prays she doesn’t have to fight cancer again.

“It’s been one hell of a surreal year, I can’t believe I survived it. I was diagnosed at a point of my life where I was at my fittest and healthiest.

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Pasifika women are more likely to die from breast cancer than any other ethnic group in New Zealand.

“I don’t want to scare the daylights out of everyone but even I wasn’t immune to cancer.”

Fuimaono also believes her experience has put her in a unique position to inspire Pacific women to realise the importance of being vigilant about their breast health.

According to the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation, Pacific women are 54 per cent more likely to die of breast cancer than other New Zealand women, despite having a similar risk to other women of developing the same disease.

A 2018 study on the ethnic disparities in breast cancer survival rates in New Zealand, and which factors contribute to those rates, found one of the biggest contributors was late diagnosis.

“Pacific women, we love to put ourselves last and everyone else first. We can take care of everything and every one else but neglect ourselves,” Fuimaono said.

Fuimaono will take part in the Pink Ribbon Walk in Auckland on November 14 and while she’s walked it before years ago, this time will be more personal and emotional.

“Right now I’m focused on recovering. I just want to enjoy the rest of the year, I’m coming out the other side a bit broken, bruised and tired but really thankful that I beat breast cancer.”

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