NZ Hiking Adventures - my Vulva Tried to Kill me but I Walked it off

My Vulva Tried to Kill me but I Walked it off

Chapter One: The Diagnosis I Never Expected

I have lichen sclerosus. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.

That hasn’t always been true.

For over a decade, I have lived with this chronic, invisible condition tucked quietly into the background of my life — a private reality I didn’t often speak aloud. Lichen sclerosus was something I managed, monitored, endured. It shaped my days in quiet, frustrating ways: a low hum of discomfort, vigilance, and emotional labour. I adapted to it. Most people had no idea I was carrying it with me.

But in June 2025, my private battle stepped into the light. I was diagnosed with stage 1a vulvar cancer.

That was the moment everything changed in ways I had never expected.

I began 2025 with plans. Goals. I was healthy, strong, and full of momentum — out in the hills and backcountry most weekends, chasing a personal milestone. I’d set myself a hut-bagging target: 25 huts by the end of the year. By early May, I’d smashed it. So when a colleague casually suggested I aim for 52 huts instead — one for every week of the year — I jumped at it. I recalculated. Three huts a month. Hard work, sure, but absolutely doable.

What I didn’t know then was that I was about to enter a very different kind of terrain — one I couldn’t track on a Topo map or capture in a photo or a blog post. A wilderness not made of ridgelines and rivers, but of pathology reports and surgical plans. I would soon be walking a new trail entirely: cancer.

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Living with Lichen Sclerosus

Lichen sclerosus is a chronic inflammatory skin condition that primarily affects the vulva, although it can also occur on other parts of the body. It’s rare. Lifelong. Not contagious — but absolutely life-altering.

The skin becomes thin, pale, almost paper-like. Fragile to the point of tearing from everyday friction. It can scar, fuse, itch relentlessly, and make the simple act of being in your body a source of anxiety or pain. It’s a condition that interrupts intimacy, sleep, hiking, confidence. You begin to distrust your own skin. You second-guess every sensation.

And the most dangerous thing? Lichen sclerosus significantly increases your risk of vulvar cancer — particularly a rare form of precancer called differentiated vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia (dVIN). Unlike other precancerous conditions, dVIN doesn’t follow a slow, predictable path. It can appear quietly and escalate quickly, if not treated. And it almost always occurs in the context of long-term lichen sclerosus.

For years, I lived with that risk. I did everything right — followed the treatment protocols, used high-potency steroid ointments, went to annual checkups. I underwent biopsies when areas looked suspicious, answered the same awkward questions again and again. Most appointments ended with a cautious “keep managing,” or “no changes.” Reassuring enough. 

Until one didn’t.

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The Pathology Shift

In May 2025, one of my routine checkups went differently. There were areas of concern, they needed to be biopsied.  Likely to come back as lichen sclerosis but concerning enough to double check.

The pathology report showed dVIN — precancerous changes in the vulvar skin - “it’s not cancer” the gynaecologist had told me. Subtle, but significant. The kind of change you don’t ignore.

Suddenly, everything became more urgent. “Watch and wait” was no longer the strategy. My gynaecologist explained the next step: a wide local excision. A minor procedure on paper — day surgery under general anaesthetic to remove the affected area with a margin of healthy-looking skin, sent for pathology to check on the margins.

But nothing about that felt minor to me. Not when you’ve already lived with the constant erosion of trust in your own body. Not when you know what surgery can mean to tissue that’s already thinned and fragile. I had a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that this was just the beginning.

And I was right.

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The Call That Changed Everything

That surgery, the first, for the wide local excision, was on June 6th at St George’s Hospital. I was told I’d be hiking again in two to three weeks. The plan was to remove the lesion plus a wide margin, send it off to pathology, and if the margins were clear, that would be it. I wanted to believe that.

Two weeks later, the day before my post-op appointment, the phone rang.

“Can you bring a support person to your follow-up tomorrow?”

That’s when I knew.  You don’t get asked to bring a support person for good news.

The pathology report had confirmed it: vulvar squamous cell carcinoma. Stage 1a. It had been cancer all along. A small tumour, 1mm deep. Clear margins, but narrow. No signs of spread. All the phrases they say to reassure you.

And I was grateful. Deeply, honestly grateful.

But I was also devastated.

Because no matter how early they caught it — no matter how surgically neat the report looked — I had cancer. And they had taken a part of me I couldn’t get back.

Not just flesh. Not just skin.

They took something else, too. Autonomy. Innocence. The strange internal belief that I was safe from the worst. The idea that somehow, by being aware and diligent, I was untouchable.

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The Unspoken Diagnosis

Vulvar cancer doesn’t come with branded awareness campaigns. It’s not pink-ribboned. It’s not spoken about publicly or worn on badges in solidarity. It lives in the shadows, obscured by silence and social discomfort.

People don’t even like talking about vulvas — let alone how to talk about its cancers.

Vulvar squamous cell carcinoma is the most common type of vulvar cancer, and it most often develops in older women. But not always. Not me. Not now.

Stage 1a sounds small — and technically, it is. Confined. Superficial. Operable. But emotionally? There’s nothing small about it.

Especially not when it’s growing inside the part of your body that’s already been chronically attacked, treated, altered, monitored, and misunderstood.

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The MDP and the Plan Ahead

My case was escalated to a Multidisciplinary Panel (MDP) — a team of specialists who would collectively review and plan the next phase of treatment. They recommended a CT scan to check for internal spread, a sentinel lymph node biopsy to assess whether cancer cells had moved into my lymphatic system, and a second excision surgery to increase the margin around the tumour site.

My CT scan was booked for July 4th.

The next day, I flew to Sydney to spend a week with my parents. It was meant to be a break — a breath. But I spent most of those days in limbo, waiting for results, waiting for surgery dates, trying to quiet the storm in my chest. The message finally came: No spread detected on CT. I exhaled for the first time in weeks.

Surgery was booked for August 4th — just one month away.

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This is Where the Story Begins

The twelve months that followed that biopsy were marked by paradox. I was terrified and brave. Broken and whole. Grieving and grateful. There were surgeries, tears, blood tests, moments of despair, and quiet victories.

But through it all — I kept hiking.

Through the medical corridors and sterile waiting rooms, I kept dreaming of trails and huts and alpine passes. Through the scans and pathology reports, I kept returning to the wild. Every step was a refusal. Every hut a quiet yes.

Because nature never asked me to be okay.

It only asked me to show up.

And I did — again and again.

*

Returning to the Hills

Those weeks between surgeries were some of the hardest I’ve ever lived.

There was so much waiting. So much not-knowing. Every part of my world became medicalised — scans, biopsies, histology, MDP meetings, surgical plans. The language of medicine slowly became my second tongue: unfamiliar at first, then suffocatingly fluent. I stopped making plans. My calendar filled with appointments and follow-ups instead of hikes and hut bagging trips. I stopped talking about the future. I stopped dreaming about summer.

My life shrank down to a hospital gown, a set of symptoms, and a list of tasks to be ticked off before the next consultation. I felt more like a case file than a person.

But one thing still remained mine: the hills.

Hiking wasn’t just something I did for fun anymore — it became a way to ground myself in something real. Something that didn’t depend on blood test results or biopsy margins. The hills asked nothing of me, except that I keep putting one foot in front of the other. They didn’t care about my diagnosis, my scars, or my fatigue. They didn’t pity me or prod at me with latex gloves. They just existed — solid, ancient, indifferent. And I could hike among them.

Three weeks after that first surgery — stitches barely out, emotions still raw — I pulled on my boots and joined the tramping club for a day hike up Mt Herbert. I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t trying to be brave. I just needed to feel something other than dread. I needed to remember what it felt like to move for the sake of movement, to sweat for a reason other than anxiety. I needed to stand high above the chaos of the city and see the hills stretched out before me, as if to say: You’re still here. You’re still capable. You still belong in your body.

When I returned from Sydney, I hiked around Lake Clearwater — solo. I needed the quiet. The spaciousness. The rhythm of my boots on the earth. The healing was almost complete, physically at least. But more importantly, I felt emotionally ready for the next step. That hike gave me time to reflect, to gather myself before the next round of procedures. It cleared my mind and helped me find the words to speak my truth publicly.

Until that point, my diagnosis had lived mostly in whispers — a thing I was processing quietly, privately. But after that hike, I found my voice. I found the courage to begin sharing — not just about the cancer, but the lichen sclerosus too. The shame, the pain, the silence. I began talking about it online. Opening up. Starting conversations I wish someone had started for me years ago.

Then came the hike to Packhorse Hut from Gebbies Pass, so I could bag Packhorse Biv. It was the first hut I bagged post-surgery. It felt like something had clicked back into place. I wasn’t just recovering — I was re-entering. Reclaiming.

My focus shifted. Instead of counting down the days to my next surgery with dread, I began counting huts again. I had a goal — 52 huts by the end of the year — and that became my new compass. Packhorse Biv was number 32. Just 20 more to go. Each one now a marker of resilience, not just geography.

This was the beginning of a new kind of healing — not medical, but essential. A healing of agency. Of identity. Of remembering that I am not just a patient — I am a hiker. A woman who walks through wild places and finds herself again in their silence.

*

Into the Whitcombe Valley

In the final days before my second surgery, I needed more than distraction — I needed distance. I needed wildness. I needed to feel utterly and completely away from the clinical world that had swallowed me so completely and quickly.  This hike had been planned after my first surgery and before I’d been given the vulva cancer diagnosis.

I disappeared into the backcountry with my friend Renee. We hiked deep into the Whitcombe Valley, a place as remote and rugged as I felt internally. The landscape was untamed — steep gorges, rugged rivers, wild peaks pressing against the sky. It was a world utterly indifferent to human worry, and that was exactly what I needed.

We slept in backcountry huts, beside rivers that roared through the night. I lay awake beneath those vast, star-scattered skies and let the fear stretch out of me. It didn’t disappear, but it loosened its grip.

I moved slowly. Deliberately. Letting the landscape set the pace. I wasn’t pushing myself — I was honouring what my body had endured, and what it still had to face. The valley didn’t ask me to be strong. It just offered space.

That trip wasn’t just a mental reset — it was a quiet rebellion. A declaration of sorts: Cancer had invaded my body, but it hadn’t taken my spirit. I could still hike into wild places. I could still sleep rough, wake cold, and feel alive. I could still choose where to go.

Two more huts crossed off the list: numbers 33 and 34. Not just numbers, but milestones of reclamation. My aching body was hesitant, but my mind was focused. On the way home, I wasn’t ready to stop. I detoured to Lockwood Shelter, stopping first at Temple Basin to climb the short but steep 2.5-kilometre track.

It was tough — relentlessly steep, the kind of climb that makes you question your decisions halfway up. My legs burned, and part of me — the tired, uncertain part — wanted to turn back. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. My stubbornness wouldn’t let me. I wasn’t just climbing for the shelter — I was climbing to prove that I still could.

Lockwood Shelter made it 35 huts for the year. And more than that — it was a trail I’d long wanted to do but kept putting off. Now, it became part of the tapestry of my healing. I’d reclaimed a trail, a part of myself, and a reason to keep going.

Seventeen huts remained. Six weeks of recovery stretched ahead. But for the first time in months, I wasn’t just waiting. I was planning. Mapping. Dreaming again.

Because even in the thick of a cancer diagnosis, even when your skin and your spirit feel scarred, there’s still a trail waiting.

And I was still hiking it.

*

A Second Round of Surgery

Exactly one week after returning from the Whitcombe Valley, I found myself back in hospital, facing my second surgery — this one deeper, more invasive, and heavier with consequence. I was scared and nervous, but there was also a quiet resignation in me, an acceptance that this was the next necessary step. It wasn’t a choice in; it simply was. After two nights on the ward, I was home again, confined to rest, my body stitched and sore, my mind restless. For two long weeks, I scrolled endlessly through topo maps and flicked between calendar dates, trying to plan what was next. It was the only kind of control I felt I still had.

Two weeks after surgery, I was meant to head to Quail Island — and I refused to be told otherwise. When that weekend finally came, I was ready to test my strength, ready to feel the outside world again. The walk around the island wasn’t hard, but after weeks of doing nothing, even gentle terrain felt monumental. I moved with slow, deliberate purpose, every step tugging at the wound in my groin where the lymph nodes had been removed. The pain was sharp, deep, and insistent, but I refused to give in — not after everything I’d already done to reach this point.

After a few days of rest, I flew north for a work conference, then caught the InterCity to Auckland to see my family. The long bus ride and late nights undid the fragile healing I’d built up. By the time I arrived, my groin throbbed with pain, the swelling returning with a vengeance. I went back on anti-inflammatories and painkillers, trying to quiet my body’s protest. When I returned home, I called the hospital and arranged a follow-up appointment. But before that could happen, I was back out on the tracks — because I couldn’t not be.

In Christchurch, I met a friend for a short hike to Gibraltar Rock on the Summit Road, followed by a quick wander through Omahu Bush in search of an old derelict hut. The movement helped, even if it hurt. My strength was returning, the bruising fading, my body relearning how to trust itself again. At my hospital appointment, my oncologist examined the area and calmly explained I’d burst a vein — not uncommon, especially for someone who refused to sit still. It wasn’t dangerous, just another reminder that healing had its own pace. Still, that sense of deflation hit me hard. I left feeling frustrated, questioning myself: What was I doing? The thought lingered for weeks, following me into the next month.

The following weekend, I set my sights on Lake Ida and Lake Catherine, adding two more huts to my growing list. The walk wasn’t overly strenuous, but it was exactly what I needed — a chance to feel capable again, to let my mind quiet in the rhythm of walking. These were huts 38 and 39, edging me closer to the goal that had come to define my year. I told myself that if I could just keep going — keep moving, keep bagging huts — everything else would stay at bay.

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Rewilding Amongst the Storms

By the end of September, I was back in the high country — this time in Omarama for Tania’s sixtieth birthday. The weather had other plans, though. Spring had arrived with its usual mix of wild winds, flooding rivers, and unpredictable chaos. Plans changed almost daily, and the constant shifting took its toll. Still, between the storms, I managed to complete the Ben Ohau Circuit and visit Pearson Hut — one of my longest, hardest days since surgery. My body ached the way it used to after big climbs, a kind of pain that felt like progress.

On the drive home, Carla and I squeezed in another quick mission, hiking to Baikie Hut and Gladstone Stream Hut. The track wound easily along farm 4WD roads, my muscles relaxing into the rhythm of movement. For the first time in months, I felt genuinely strong again — hiking strong.

After a short weekend off, I was back at it — another plan B adventure, another chance to disappear into the backcountry. Three more huts added to the tally, and the growing feeling that I was preparing for something bigger: the Labour Weekend trip I’d been dreaming of for months. But spring wasn’t finished with me yet. Gale-force winds, heavy rain, and flooded tracks turned that long weekend into a maze of backup plans. Plan A became Plan B, then C, and finally D. Still, I couldn’t stay home. I was obsessed — not just with reaching huts, but with not stopping. I’d had enough setbacks, enough stillness. I wasn’t ready to sit with myself again.

We spent a night at Leaning Lodge Hut on the Rock and Pillar Range before the wind drove us back down, retreating to Oamaru for shorter day hikes instead. That day, I celebrated my fifty-second hut — Kahikatea Lodge — under a brilliant blue sky. The hike was easy, the setting idyllic, and for a brief moment, I felt deeply content. But even then, another voice rose quietly in the background: so now what? It was only October, and I’d reached the goal that had carried me all year — fifty-two huts in twelve months. And yet, somehow, it still didn’t feel like enough. The following day, we hiked the Staircase Hut circuit, it was relentless with steep climbs and descents, a long day that made me grateful for persisting with plans to fill the weekend.

The next weekend, I returned to the Mackenzie District, hiking up the Jollie River to Green Point Hut. The weather had finally calmed, and so had I. My body felt strong, my spirit settled. I could hardly believe that just months before, I’d been relearning how to walk without pain. As October slipped into November, I sensed the shift — not just in the seasons, but in myself. Something was changing, quietly, inevitably.

But even as I pushed myself toward the next set of tracks - Mt Grey, Lake Daniell - I could feel the undercurrent of something heavier moving beneath every planned kilometre. November loomed. My first follow-up appointment at Christchurch Women’s sat on the calendar like a quiet threat, the start of my new “normal”: three-monthly checks for the foreseeable future. It was the first one since fully healing from surgery, and with every passing day my mind circled the same exhausting loop—what if something looked wrong, what if the pain I felt was more than healing, what if the cancer had already returned? I spent those hikes caught between determination and dread, over-analysing every sensation, bracing myself for news I wasn’t ready to face. And yet, when the 21st finally arrived, the outcome was so simple it almost undid me. “It’s healing beautifully,” she said. Relief washed over me in a way that felt both grounding and surreal—like stepping off a ridgeline and finding solid ground exactly where I feared it wouldn’t be.

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The year is ending

My final hike of 2025 felt like a quiet triumph. October’s Plan A—the one that had been postponed, reshuffled, and doubted—was finally back on and, this time, it stuck. Sylvia Tops, paired with the Love Our Huts visit to Devils Den Bivvy, became the bookend to a year that had demanded far more from me than I’d ever anticipated. It was the hardest multi-day hike I completed all year, not just in physical terms, but in what it represented. I carried the weight of the months behind me with every step, and with each climb, I proved to myself that I was still capable—still strong, still moving forward.

Christmas arrived almost quietly. There was no fanfare, no sense of celebration spilling over the edges of the day. Instead, it felt like a gentle closing of a door on a year that had been heavy and consuming. But the end of the year still held promise. Our final adventures of 2025 offered one last chance to add to my hut tally and, as always, required flexibility. Weather intervened, plans shifted once again from A to B, and I adapted—something I had learned to do well this year.

By New Year’s Eve, I found myself sitting in the Central Otago sun, the heat on my skin, reflecting on how fitting it felt to end the year this way—outdoors, moving, and grounded. This final adventure had been exactly what I needed. A full stop, not an ellipsis. I had reached a record number of huts for the year, a tangible reminder that even in the hardest seasons, progress still counts.

2025 taught me perspective. It stripped things back and forced me to decide what mattered, and what didn’t. As I looked toward 2026, the lesson I carried with me was persistence—the quiet kind that shows up again and again, even when the path isn’t clear. I already had two hikes booked: Hump Ridge and Welcome Flats, with more pencilled into the calendar, each one a promise to myself.

My next follow-up appointment sat at the end of February, distant enough to feel manageable. There was space before it—room for adventure, movement, and breath—before my thoughts would inevitably circle back to the familiar what if. For now, though, I was still here, still planning, still walking forward. And that felt like enough to begin.

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Starting 2026 Experienced

I entered 2026 cautiously, aware that the year ahead would be shaped by follow-up appointments, uncertainty, and the quiet aftermath of everything 2025 had taken from me. I couldn’t control what those appointments would reveal, but I could control how I moved forward — and in January, I learned to hold onto that distinction.

The first month of the year became a proving ground. A hard multi-day tramp on the West Coast tested me physically and mentally from the outset, reminding me that recovery is not linear and confidence is something you rebuild, step by step. There were moments when I questioned whether I could continue, when fear crept in early and loudly, but each day demanded a simple decision: to focus only on what was immediately in front of me, and to keep going.

The mountains reinforced a lesson I was still learning — that progress doesn’t require certainty, only commitment. I learned to adjust plans without abandoning them, to accept fear without letting it decide for me, and to trust my body again as it carried me through steep climbs, exposed ground, and long, exhausting days. By the end of that first month, I wasn’t chasing reassurance anymore. I was learning how to live alongside the unknown.

Listening to my story — my diagnosis, recovery, and return to the backcountry — played aloud in a remote hut on the West Coast became a quiet turning point. In that moment, surrounded by effort and wilderness, I recognised how far I’d come. Not just in distance walked or huts reached, but in perspective.

January didn’t erase uncertainty. It taught me how to move with it.

That mindset — steady, grounded, and focused on what I could control — became the foundation I carried into the rest of 2026, shaping how I approached both my hiking goals and the life unfolding beyond the track.

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