Claire’s cancer crisis ‘I WAS CRYING EVERY DAY’
‘I was expecting a call from the hospital. Those hours of waiting kind of killed me’
For 20 years, Claire Chitham had been free from the symptoms of the autoimmune disease that had plagued her youth, but as 2020 brought lockdowns, a death in the family and her mother’s cancer diagnosis, the actress feared a devastating relapse of the inflammatory bowel condition.
Chatting to Woman’s Day in a bustling Auckland café, the former Shortland Street and Outrageous Fortune star, 42, says it was a cruel irony that she was writing a book about her experience of beating Crohn’s disease at the time.
“My guts were a mess and I freaked out,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘This is the universe’s way of saying you’re a bloody idiot – you’ve written
