When it comes to exercise, sisters Leah Booth and Trudi Diamond couldn’t be more different. Eldest Leah (42), an experienced half-marathon runner, enjoys her “me time” pounding the pavement, while 38-year-old Trudi avoids exercise as best she can.
But when they discovered Walking Stars, a night-time half-marathon walk in support of the Cancer Society, fell on their late sister Kim’s birthday, it was a cause Trudi couldn’t help but lace up her sneakers for – with a little encouragement from Leah.
It’s been nearly seven years since they lost their youngest sibling, Kim Diamond, to spinal cancer at just 29 years old, but this is one of the first times that her surviving siblings have openly shared their memories about that all-consuming, emotional period of their lives.
“I don’t know about that ‘getting better with time’ saying, because it doesn’t get better or easier,” Leah confesses, trying to hold back her tears. “We were so used to Kim being here. We didn’t know what to do when she was gone.”
Leah (left) and Trudi are stepping out as Walking Stars to honour the sister they still miss enormously.
“Our sister was very funny,” Leah continues. “You’d find yourself doing crazy things and just go along with it. She was a nutbar!”
It was this passion for life that made her suffering all the more excruciating for her sisters, as they watched the social butterfly gradually lose control of her body before also losing her life.
It began as severe backache, which Kim described as feeling like a pinched nerve. It wasn’t until she began to feel increasingly tired and her legs stopped working properly that Kim’s doctor referred her for investigative tests.
ACT scan revealed a tumour was present in the base of her spine and Kim was diagnosed with Conus Ependymoma, a rare cancer.
“They didn’t know what they were dealing with at first,” Leah says. “They thought they could remove it, and they did, but the cancer just spread through her nervous system. It looked like icing sugar on the scans, just scattered out from her spinal cord along the nerve endings. They did chemotherapy and radiation, but the cancer was too aggressive.”
Trudi (left) and Kim were a very close pair.
Gradually, Kim lost the use of her legs and had to be in a wheelchair.
She underwent rehab and showed signs of improvement – during a remission period, she was even able to walk again, without the use of crutches, and was thrilled to attend Leah’s wedding to her husband Regan (37) in 2007.
“But it only gave us false hope – the cancer came back with vengeance,” says Leah.
Trudi says that throughout her ordeal, Kim “never complained. Sure, she had her down days, but Kim was brave”.
Adds Leah, her voice cracking, “I only saw her break once, when she said to me, ‘All I want is a hug. That’s all I want. But who’s going to want this?’ That’s what broke my heart, because everyone wanted a bit of her.”
Kim slowly lost more and more of her motor functions to this rare and cruel cancer, and moved to Laura Fergusson, a rehabilitation centre in Auckland that allows patients to live on site in self-contained units with staff on hand for anything they may need.
“We were shaving her legs, doing personal girly stuff, you know,” says Leah. “You think you could never do that for anyone, but we just got on with it.”
Kim Diamond, 1978–2008.
Sadly, Kim became paralysed from the neck down, and from there it was only a matter of weeks until she passed away – just six weeks from the birth of Leah’s son Ryder (now six).
Her passing has left a huge chasm in the family, with their parents – mother Louise and stepfather Paul – grieving for the loss of their daughter, and Leah and Trudi’s own families coping in their individual ways.
“I have two children who were really close with her,” Trudi, mother to daughter Kasi (17) and son Brook (20), says through tears.
“I was trying to accept what happened while in the meantime, my daughter was devastated. I had to hold it in and pretend it was okay, but it was really tough.”
“It was the biggest blessing for me to give birth to my son,” Leah reflects. “I cried a lot during that period. All I could think was that my son wouldn’t get to meet his aunty.”
This year marks the first time the sisters have been able to do something to remember Kim on her birthday, by participating in the Walking Stars event on November 22. Raising money for the Cancer Society, the charity event will see Leah and Trudi walking 21km through Auckland in memory of their beloved sister.
“It’s going to be a long and emotional day,” Leah says. “We always wake up on her birthday and think of her, but this year we’re doing something positive and nice. Kim will be with us every step of the way.”
