For Mel Vanzati, Surviving Breast Cancer Meant Endless Kilometres on the Road
“In the bush, getting cancer means getting in the car.”
For Mel Vanzati, rural cancer care came with a second burden. Distance.
Survival meant thousands of kilometres on the road, uprooting her life, and navigating a health system built around cities, not country towns.
Mel grew up in Tailem Bend and has spent more than five decades living and working across regional South Australia, including Murray Bridge, Roxby Downs and Morgan. Distance was part of the deal. You drove when you had to and didn’t make a fuss.
In 2017, while working as a Logistics Supervisor in Roxby Downs, Mel noticed something unusual, an inverted nipple. No pain. No lump. Just different enough to raise with her GP who sent her to Adelaide for testing.
That first appointment meant a 12-hour round trip for an ultrasound, mammogram and biopsies, all in one day. Then came an agonising six-week wait for results. Mel and her partner Carl didn’t tell the kids. It was Christmas.
On January 22, Mel was diagnosed with breast cancer.
To access treatment and stay alive, Mel and Carl uprooted their lives and moved 450 kilometres south from Roxby Downs to Morgan. Even then, chemotherapy still meant a weekly 500-kilometre round trip to Adelaide, every Wednesday, for three months at a time.
Before treatment began, Mel asked her oncologist one thing.
“Can I go to Bali?”
“Yes,” they said, “as long as you’re back by the seventh.”
“I just had to get away,” Mel says. “I was just over everyone in my face. So I took off for five days and had a ball. I just did my own thing.”
When she returned, treatment began.
Sixteen rounds of chemotherapy across multiple 12-week blocks. Appointments were usually booked for 9 or 9.30am, which meant leaving before dawn and driving through Aussie wildlife. Most days, Mel drove herself.
“I was getting up with the sparrows, driving through all the roos,” she says.
By the end of chemotherapy alone, Mel had driven about 8,700 kilometres. All for non-negotiable, life-saving care.
This is the reality of rural cancer care for many regional patients, where treatment comes with constant travel and little flexibility.
What made it harder wasn’t only the cancer. It was the system around it.
Appointments were booked without regard for distance. Services didn’t communicate. Blood tests were repeated because her regional pathology unit lacked tools like vein finders. Paperwork assumed time and energy from someone already depleted.
The Patient Assistance Transport Scheme (PATS) added another layer. Forms, deadlines, and in-person lodgement. Miss a step and claims were rejected. The scheme didn’t account for vehicle wear, lost income or the risk of long-distance driving while unwell.
After chemotherapy, Mel underwent a single mastectomy. Unfortunately complications followed. Post-operative fluid meant daily draining in Adelaide for weeks, then daily trips to Waikerie. Radiation came next, with five weeks of daily 7am appointments and more pre-dawn travel.
On the night of her daughter Dani-Rae’s wedding, Mel became seriously unwell. A severe infection left a deep wound that took four months to heal. Daily care in Waikerie continued until she could manage it herself at home to reduce travel. Dressings and supplies cost around $1,000 out of pocket and multiple reconstructive surgeries followed.
Mel knows she is one of the lucky ones. She has private health insurance and can drive. Many can’t.
Even so, access to follow-up care remains a major issue.
“The GP my oncologist suggested wouldn’t take any new patients. There was a four-week wait for the other,” she says. “I’ve seen my follow-up GP twice in seven years.”
Mel believes better access to oncology nurses in regional areas would make a real difference.
“When I had my boob cut off, the nurse said, ‘Mel, I want you to promise me to do this when you get home – keep it very warm’,” she says.
“I’m always cold, always. But she said to keep it warm because it keeps the blood flowing. Nobody else tells you things like that.”
Mel’s experience shows how rural cancer care adds distance to every diagnosis, turning treatment into a physical, financial and logistical burden.
This is the seventh story in the From Here to Healthcare series, a grassroots storytelling initiative led by Alex Thomas and supported by Greater SA. The series shares real experiences from country South Australians to show how access to healthcare changes lives and outcomes, based on postcode alone.
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