Glenys Popenhagen has a simple message for anyone putting off a health check because they feel embarrassed: please don’t wait.
Ryman is sharing Glenys’ story during Bowel Cancer Awareness Month as part of its partnership with Bowel Cancer New Zealand, aiming to help normalise conversations about bowel health and encourage early checks.
For Glenys, Resident Services Manager at Ryman’s Diana Isaac Village in Christchurch, it’s a message she wishes she’d followed herself by seeing a doctor.
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She was just 26 when she first started having bowel symptoms - blood in her poo, constant diarrhoea and severe pain. For almost a year, she tried to ignore them.
“It was embarrassing,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh no, it’ll go away, it’ll go away.’”
Instead, Glenys began a long health journey that included ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease, major bowel surgery, a J-pouch procedure, chemotherapy and radiation after cancer was found, and later, in her 50s, permanent surgery that removed her large bowel and left her with an ileostomy bag.
It sounds enormous, and it was. At one point, Glenys was given six months to live. She also spent months recovering from surgery, including time on a feeding machine after complications affected the way her body processed food.
But that is not where Glenys’ story ends. In many ways, it is where another part of it begins.
Now 66, Glenys talks about her ileostomy and ‘Barbie butt’ with the no-nonsense, humorous attitude she brings to most things. Some days it can be frustrating, she says, but ultimately she is thankful.
“It’s a lifesaver,” she says. “It’s been the best outcome overall because I don’t have pain anymore.”
And it certainly hasn’t stopped her living. Glenys has travelled through seven states in America, explored Asia and Cambodia, enjoys regular cocktail lunches with her girlfriends, and says there is very little she can’t do. She can swim, travel, eat most foods and, most importantly, get on with life.
“It hasn’t held me back at all,” she says. “It’s probably given me a new lease of life.”
That positive attitude is familiar to anyone who works with Glenys at Diana Isaac Village. She joined Ryman 13 years ago as an evening receptionist, intending to work part-time. Within weeks she was asked to become assistant manager, and today she works five days a week as Resident Services Manager.
“I love my job. I love the people. I love the village,” she says. “It’s an awesome place to work. We always have a laugh or a high five as you walk past someone.”
Her warmth, resilience and ability to ‘keep calm and carry on’ - even on the days when everything seems to go wrong at once - were recognised in 2023 when she won the Kevin Hickman Award, the top honour in the annual Ryman Awards.
Glenys is the first to say life has thrown plenty at her. Alongside her own health challenges, she is now raising two of her grandchildren after the death of her daughter Amanda. Work, she says, has been her sanctuary, and her family keeps her grounded. Sundays are ‘Nana Day’, when she switches from rule-enforcer to baker, treat-giver and horse-riding supporter.
She puts her outlook down to the way she was raised.
“I’ve always been positive,” she says. “My parents instilled in us never to let anything beat you.”
Because of what she has been through, Glenys is also able to support residents facing similar surgery. Some have felt pretty down after being told they need a bag. Glenys will sit with them and listen, saying they are often hugely surprised when she tells them she has one too.
“They say, ‘We can’t tell!’ I tell them once you get over that initial bit, life’s good,” she says. “If the worst outcome happens and you get a bag, it’s not the end of the world.”
Her biggest hope in sharing her story is that it might prompt someone else to act sooner than she did. She still wonders whether things may have been different if she had spoken up earlier.
“I kick myself in a way because I let the symptoms carry on,” she says. “It may not have been as bad if I’d caught it earlier.”
This is why she feels passionately about saying to people: don’t be embarrassed, don’t hope it will disappear, and don’t wait until symptoms become impossible to ignore.
“That’s why I’m sharing my experience. And if it helps one person, it’s worth it,” Glenys says.