Ms Aitchison, who has the breast cancer gene BRCA2, underwent a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction in July after her doctors found abnormal cells that increased her risk of developing invasive breast cancer. After hearing the news, Ms Berejiklian sent her a card, saying "I hope you are recovering well and our thoughts are with you and your family during this time". Ms Aitchison wrote a lengthy reply, snapped a photograph showing the contents of the two cards, and posted the photo on her Facebook page, with the note "fix our health system ... stop wasting billions of dollars on stadiums!" - attracting hundreds of shares and likes. The correspondence between Jenny Aitchison and Gladys Berejiklian. In her reply, she said she had ruled out radiation and chemotherapy and that taking "preventer drugs" wasn't an option.

"I couldn’t find a surgeon in the Hunter who could do my surgery and had to wait six months for a private specialist in Sydney," the Member for Maitland wrote. "After surgery I had complications where I spent 52 hours in St Vincent's Public Hospital emergency department without being fed for 18 hours. The staff were amazing and overworked but there were no beds in either private or public wards." She said she wanted to share the details because she wanted Ms Berejiklian to know, first hand, "what it’s like to be woman in regional NSW struggling with cancer". "I want you to fix our health system. Fund more screening for all women and education campaigns, and stop wasting billions of dollars on stadiums!"

Ms Aitchison, the Opposition spokesperson for small business and the prevention of domestic violence, later told Fairfax Media she had written and publicly shared the letter because she felt the Premier wasn't aware of how much people were struggling. "It was the week after Women’s Health Week and I felt the government was fairly silent on women’s health issues, it was the week I spoke to a woman with significant termite issues in public housing but she didn't have much money because she had cervical cancer," she said. "I thought - these are the struggles that people are going through in our electorate and it made me really angry. Stadiums aren’t going to be saving lives. Gladys herself is not seeing the personal cost of the cuts in health, particularly in regional areas." Asked how she was now doing, Ms Aitchison said: "I'm good, everything has healed." Last week, Ms Berejiklian rejected the nurses' union calls for mandated nurse-to-patient ratios and pointed to the government's achievements since 2011 – an extra 9600 doctors, nurses and midwives and 70 new or upgraded hospitals.