NZ Story - Helena McAlpine, Living Every Moment

I’m much more interested in the ‘what can we do right now?' Let’s go and blow something up! Let's go swim with some sharks! Let's go jump out of a plane ... see if we bounce!

– Helena McAlpine

She is wringing absolutely everything out of her life.

– Clarke Gayford

I had previously thought that I was invincible, but this time around I wasn’t…

– McAlpine, on receiving the terminal diagnosis

Learn from my mistakes, don’t be an idiot like I am. Look after yourselves. It’s really simple. Make the right choice.

– Helena McAlpine

This woman has always lived her life in the fast lane, I mean the very fast lane, and when she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, well you know what: it hasn’t slowed her down one little bit. She is relentlessly upbeat and determined to face this illness with courage.

– Shavaughn Ruakere

'I've just been told that I have breast cancer: what can you do to help me, and what on earth can I do to help you!'

– McAlpine's call to the Breast Cancer Foundation after learning that she had the disease

Cancer was tangible: there was a lump, you could physically feel it. Depression, and being that unhappy: you can’t physically touch it and cut it out or get rid of it. And I always thought if you could get through that depression, you could do anything.

– Helena McAlpine