Bringing Cancer Care Closer to Home in Nanaimo

One in two people will receive a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. Bucking this statistic are Roberta and Joe Manzini. They faced three cancer diagnoses together — with the support of friends and family, who helped the Nanaimo couple travel to Victoria and Vancouver for treatment. The development of BC Cancer – Nanaimo is welcome news to the pair who say close-to-home care would have greatly eased their cancer journeys.

“Man, you are hot,” was not the reception Joe was expecting from the border guard when he, Roberta and friends were catching the passenger-only ferry from Victoria to Seattle in 2009 to celebrate New Year’s Eve at the Space Needle.

“We were in line, Joe goes through and all of a sudden this alarm goes off,” says Roberta.

After pulling him aside, the guard got out a Geiger counter (a device used to scan for radioactive materials, including those in nuclear weapons) and marveled at the “heat” coming off Joe.

Joe explained it was due to his recent brachytherapy for prostate cancer, a treatment that implants radioactive seeds in the tumour to destroy cancer cells while sparing surrounding healthy tissue.

The benefit of brachytherapy — despite triggering radiation detectors at security checkpoints — is it’s done in one treatment. Unlike Roberta, who received chemotherapy and standard radiotherapy for esophageal cancer in 2023 which required her to travel to BC Cancer – Victoria for six weeks.

Thankfully, the Manzinis’ family and friends pitched in to help. Their daughter, Lisa, came over every Sunday night from Squamish to drive Roberta and Joe to Victoria for her treatments on Monday mornings. And their friend, Inga, delivered Lisa back to the Departure Bay ferry terminal every Monday night so she could return to her job as a teacher in Squamish Tuesday through Friday.

“I have a lovely sister in Victoria, so we stayed with her and her husband for six weeks,” says Roberta. “It saved my life as it was really difficult, especially during the final two weeks of my chemotherapy.”

Roberta’s treatments were in June and July, which fortunately saved them from treacherous winter conditions on Vancouver Island’s Malahat highway, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing.

“One day, we were on our way down to Victoria on a Monday for my chemotherapy and radiation, and a deer decided to run into us. It took the back bumper off. We went to a gas station and Joe got somebody to put a screw in and they taped the car up — and I still made my 10 a.m. appointment.”

BC Cancer – Nanaimo will make a huge difference for local patients as they won’t have to contend with three or more hours of commuting, says Roberta.

Roberta has called Vancouver Island home since 1954, her parents moved to Nanaimo when she was in university. Joe emigrated from Italy at 16 and was sponsored by an aunt who lived in the area.

They both worked to build the community. Joe in construction, which included digging basements and “catching” red-hot rivets, a common practice in the historical building of steel structures to create strong, permanent connections, before he ended up at the Harmac pulp mill.

Roberta taught kindergarten, which was less dangerous than Joe’s work, but hard on her back. “I’m quite tall, and I was working with five-year-olds all day, so although I loved my job, I went back to university and got my master’s in counselling and became a counsellor.”

Now in their 80s and 90s, Joe is cancer-free, after prostate cancer and a previous soft tissue sarcoma in his leg, and Roberta is doing well and accessing nutrition counselling at BC Cancer.

“The hardest part for me is not talking while I’m eating,” laughs Roberta. “I never lost weight during my treatments because Lisa told me to have whipping cream, Häagen-Dazs and butter — and it worked.”

“I do have some interesting eating habits because of the cancer, however,” she adds. “I can’t eat mashed potatoes or soft bread. There’s something about the texture, it just sticks in my throat. I can eat nachos, tacos, quesadillas and crunchy stuff — so it’s a little different than you would expect.”

But Roberta and Joe don’t have time to be typical — they’re too busy planning their next adventure.

“Each grandchild gets a trip,” says Roberta, who went ziplining with her grandson in Switzerland in 2022, just prior to her diagnosis. Next up is an African Safari with their grandchildren.

In between their globetrotting, and fishing trips to China Creek near Port Alberni, they couldn’t imagine living anywhere but Nanaimo — and are looking forward to a new BC Cancer centre that will deliver more world-class care close to home.