The next day when her symptoms continued, she went to an after hours clinic, where the doctor sent her to the emergency department. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was doubled over, I was lying down on the sort of waiting room chairs, like I just felt awful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nearly half of ovarian cancer diagnoses are through emergency presentation according to the latest State of Ovarian Cancer Aotearoa Report.<\/p>\n
After scans and blood tests, Compton was told she had fibroids \u2013 non-cancerous tumours in the uterus \u2013 and to wait six months for an ultrasound. <\/p>\n
But one of the tests showed her CA125 level, a cancer marker, was elevated. <\/p>\n
Compton couldn\u2019t let that go. <\/p>\n
She made an appointment straight away with her GP, who then sent her to a specialist and had more scans. Compton said she was grateful for private health insurance.<\/p>\n
Four weeks after the initial after-hours visit, Compton was told she had late-stage ovarian cancer, which, after surgery, was later diagnosed as two stage-one tumours.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy first question was what\u2019s the survival rate? I think that is a very common question to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
But then it was \u201cwhat\u2019s the plan\u201d. <\/p>\n
In New Zealand, one woman is diagnosed with ovarian cancer every day and one woman dies every two days.<\/p>\n
Wellington has no gynaecological surgeon after the last resigned due to burnout in late 2024. <\/p>\n
Compton had to fly to Christchurch, one of only two teams in New Zealand, for her surgery. She said there was a struggle to get her health records between the hospitals, due to what she called the broken patient information infrastructure. <\/p>\n
Her symptoms worsened between the diagnosis and surgery. Compton said she looked eight months pregnant from bloating, yet she was dropping weight at the same time. <\/p>\n
She thought she was going to die from the pain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had two what I would describe as like flare-ups … just this intense pain all up through, like, your whole midsection.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just literally the pain of the tumour radiating through the body.\u201d<\/p>\n
Compton said the symptoms could have been misinterpreted as something else like irritable bowel syndrome and encouraged others to get checked if their body felt off. <\/p>\n
In her major surgery, two tumours were discovered \u2013 an \u201cenormous\u201d one on her ovary and another smaller one on her uterus. The pathology said it was stage one cancer, but her oncologist was cautious so treated Compton as though she had stage two. <\/p>\n
She then underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, while continuing her job as a Wellington City councillor. <\/p>\n
Wellington City councillor Andrea Compton talking about the “enormous” tumour found on one of her ovaries. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n
In the six weeks before the chemo began, Compton felt the healthiest she had in a long time, driving her to push through with her work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI genuinely believe it\u2019s because this disease was out of me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly felt a million bucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through the chemo treatment and subsequent fatigue, Compton kept working, though she worked from home frequently because of her immunocompromised health.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhilst I couldn\u2019t go to the constituent meetings and the residents\u2019 associations and other things, I had to contribute in other ways, which is why I\u2019ve done things like the project boards and found savings in the Hub2 programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut where I\u2019ve been able to do community stuff, that\u2019s been through phone calls and engagement in that way.\u201d <\/p>\n
Compton had the option to take a leave of absence but said she personally would have felt guilty.<\/p>\n
\u201cI chose and I felt still able to continue to contribute to the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
She struggled with low energy at the end of her six treatments but after being told she\u2019s in remission, she\u2019s now raring to go with the council.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want the best. This isn\u2019t political for me, this is bringing experience to help them to do things better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Compton didn\u2019t need to ask her fellow councillors to not share her diagnosis with the media. She labelled it \u201ca cone of silence\u201d around the council and said that although the councillors don\u2019t all agree on everything all the time, there is \u201cno hate there\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do wonder if in some ways, weirdly, it\u2019s kind of brought us together a little bit because we\u2019ve had to be kind of like this cone of silence over us. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I have respected that and they have respected me and it\u2019s been great.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first councillor Compton told was her Northern Ward colleague and friend Tony Randle. <\/p>\n
Randle died unexpectedly in August<\/a>. Compton said they were very close and he constantly checked in on her. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was always how are you doing, even while he was abroad. We were emailing about the Harbour Quays and he would be like, how\u2019s the treatment going? <\/p>\n \u201cHe was always asking how I was doing, same with councillor [Karl] Tiefenbacher.\u201d<\/p>\n Councillor Nicola Young attended a wig fitting with Compton, who said she told Wellington Mayor Andrew Little very early on. <\/p>\n During Thursday\u2019s council meeting, Compton was dressed up in a sequined black dress for \u201cFrocktober\u201d \u2013 an initiative to raise funds for ovarian cancer research. She publicly shared the news she was in remission. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d had the good result the week before that I was NED, no evidence of disease, that\u2019s a really great milestone. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd so it just felt like it was the right time to raise awareness and if you have to do that through wearing a sparkly dress, well, so be it.\u201d<\/p>\n She said the reaction from her community has been amazing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been very overwhelming but quite humbling at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n Compton\u2019s also had to step away from her beloved netball team of 13 years. She\u2019s itching to get back on the court, saying her position as a \u201cone-handed\u201d goal shoot is \u201cquite a skill\u201d. <\/p>\n She\u2019s also looking forward to spending more time with her daughter.<\/p>\n Compton wanted to thank her family, friends, council members and staff for their respect and support during her treatment. <\/p>\n Proudly wearing her teal ribbon, representing the warriors of ovarian cancer, Compton called for women to listen to their bodies.<\/p>\n She highlighted the case of Amelie Cakebread, an 18-year-old who fought for two years for her diagnosis of ovarian cancer<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPlease listen to your bodies, if something doesn\u2019t feel right, just keep pushing,\u201d said Compton.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need more communication and more listening, there\u2019s no screening for ovarian cancer, the best you can get is a pelvic ultrasound and a CA125 blood test. <\/p>\n \u201cIn my view, I am not an expert in this field, I think a CA125 should be done at the same time as a smear test.\u201d<\/p>\n She urged women to advocate for themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t ignore the symptoms, don\u2019t just think it\u2019s IBS, don\u2019t just think you\u2019re a little bit tired. Just keep pushing.<\/p>\n \u201cWomen, please, please listen to your bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n Grace Symmans<\/a> is a Wellington-based reporter who covers news in the capital. Grace joined NZME in 2025 as a producer for Wellington Mornings on Newstalk ZB. She can be emailed at grace.symmans@nzme.co.nz<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The next day when her symptoms continued, she went to an after hours clinic, where the doctor sent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,75544,11158,2534,2199,310803,38290,14032,2026,29434,38403,1364,189,2203,13620,12018,111,43,139,69,90,37482,1136,6653,165,21733,3055,52,6123,102,2248],"class_list":["post-634374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-andrea","tag-bodies","tag-cancer","tag-city","tag-compton","tag-councillor","tag-daughter","tag-discovery","tag-enormous","tag-falling","tag-her","tag-holiday","tag-journey","tag-leading","tag-listen","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-ovaries","tag-private","tag-reflects","tag-their","tag-tumour","tag-urging","tag-wellington","tag-while","tag-with","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Wellington City councillor Andrea Compton is looking forward to having more energy on the council and on the netball court. Photo \/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n