WHAT FOLLOWS are excerpts from a diary I’ve been keeping. My wife Ann and I have lived in Maleny since the end of 1986. This is our home. We’ve raised a family here.
Our three kids are now off having their own adventures. I am 54 years old…
Life has been good and full. Still is. I’ve had a couple of challenges thrown my way in the last couple of years. In the process, I’ve learnt heaps about the world I live in, my family and friends and myself. I hope you find what follows interesting.
In Australia lung cancer kills, on average, twenty people a day – more than breast, prostate and ovarian cancer combined. The road toll takes between three or four people a day. Lung cancer is a bigger killer than the road toll.
We take six thousand million dollars in tobacco taxes every year. Where does it go? Not into lung cancer research. In 2011-12 only a fraction of one per cent of these Federal government funds will find there way directly into lung cancer research. Something is very wrong.
Maybe lung cancer sufferers deserve it. They all smoke don’t they? You can’t get lung cancer unless you smoke, right? Wrong! Three to four out of ten people who get lung cancer never smoked, or gave up smoking years ago. No one deserves lung cancer – no one – smoker, non- smoker or never smoker.
I’ve asked Michael Berry, the Hinterland Times Editor, to publish this in the hope that it may save your life or the life of someone you know.
I hope I haven’t sermonized and put you off already.
Please read on!
BY PETER OLIVER
February 2010 – Wednesday 10
“You’ve got cancer. These are tumors in your spine. They are secondaries,” says the oncologist, pointing at the scan. “We’ve got to find the primary tumor.” Ann and I sit, stunned. I went to the doctor with a sore back, has been sore for years. Life changed – just now. We say little. I try to make a joke. On the way home I ring my super funds and find out what I’m worth. It’s never enough, but things could be worse. You get some of your pay-out tax free if you can prove you’ve got a terminal illness. Oh Happy Days!
The tumor in my lung is 70 % smaller… While this is of course not remission, the oncologist is happy, so I guess I should be as well! It means my period of life on earth has been somewhat extended, unless something else takes me out first.
February 2010 – Saturday 13
We call the kids home. Ann and I have had a couple of fairly sleepless nights deciding what we might do. I usually sleep well. Not now. The specialists in Brisbane have given us four sleeping tablets to share – only four for the three nights until we see them again. They think I might do something stupid. We tell the kids what is happening. There are some tears and jokes and lots of long hugs where no one wants to let go. I love my wife and children with an intensity I have never felt before. I determine to be as strong as I can and be a good example to my children.
February 2010 – Tuesday 16
We see our GP. He has been our doctor for nearly 30 years. “Unless I saw the pathology results, I wouldn’t believe this – non-small-cell lung cancer- adenocarcinoma of the lung , stage IV,” explains our GP. “I would have thought you had TB or some obscure lung infection – caught from one of the crazy places you go for work. I would have thought, anything but this.” He is a beautiful man. He cares for his patients very deeply. I can see that if I cry, he will as well. I determine to make it as easy as I can for all of us.
February 2010 – Friday 19
I started chemo today. I asked the oncologist about life expectancy. He says that the median survival time for someone with my type and stage of lung cancer is about a year. He says we must work at getting on the right-hand side of the survival curve – some people with this disease live for five years, or more… That’s not too good, but then, I never was a betting man.
June 2010 – Wednesday 29
Having no hair and no beard after sporting such tonsorial elegance for 35 years has really made me feel the cold weather. I have become somewhat of a beanie fashion king… Anyway, I had some scans on Friday and went to the oncologist yesterday.
September 2010 – Thursday 1
My new chemotherapy regime has kept me busy… My oncologist has told me that he can’t put his hand on his heart and promise remission (absence of cancer in my body) any more…
I have been working on that inner peace stuff for as long as I can remember. I don’t feel too bad in that way, really. I have always thought and have now come to much better understand that, for me, there is definitely something that I would call my soul.
September 2011 – Wednesday 7
I had emergency surgery last Friday night. My wife, children, brother, sister and my mother were with me.
It was good that my brother brought my mother from her aged care hostel in Brisbane to be there with me. A boy always needs his Mum, even if he is 54.
I made my last confession and had the Last Rites before the surgery. I had a perforated diverticulum and various accesses scattered around my pelvic area. I spent three days in intensive care. I am now in the surgery ward at Buderim Private Hospital. Looks like peritonitis won’t kill me and I can die of cancer after all.
Ann is very worried about me not being able to walk well. She and Mick (our son) have ripped out the downstairs bathroom and toilet in our house and have got a builder in to modify it for my disabilities. Ann is being very strong. I love her very much. As Woody Allen would say – love is not a strong enough word.
September 2011 – Monday 12
How blue is the sky! I cry quietly, just a little, just for a minute, sitting in the front seat of the car. Ten days ago, I never thought I would leave the hospital alive, let alone walk out of there. They thought I would be too weak and that I would not recover because of the cancer and the chemo. Yesterday my physio watched me walking. Today, she gave me a hug and bade me well.
November 2011 – Tuesday 4
I have just finished ten sessions of radium therapy, irradiating my spine and right hip. I stopped chemo when I had the perforated bowel and it seems the cancer has started marching on a bit. Ah the nausea! Ah the pain from my esophagus, irritated by the radium therapy. Even swallowing water hurts.
January 2012 – Tuesday 10
Ann and I went on holidays with friends to Agnes Water. Ann put the car seat back and she drove there, very careful to miss as many bumps as possible. I dosed up on pain killers… . Our friends are loving and positive. I realize we are truly blessed. We stay with four of them – two couples we have known for thirty years. Every day in so many ways, they hold us in their collective arms and encircle us with love. They care for me and make sure Ann has fun…
February 2012 – Tuesday 7
“Here’s a pamphlet for Dove Cottage,” says the palliative care doctor, “It’s a marvellous hospice. You should consider going there.” How sick am I? Pretty sick, by all accounts. She tells me quietly and with a gentle smile that people don’t get to sit in the chair I am sitting in unless they don’t have long to go.
September 2011 – Monday 12
How blue is the sky! I cry quietly, just a little, just for a minute, sitting in the front seat of the car. Ten days ago, I never thought I would leave the hospital alive, let alone walk out of there. They thought I would be too weak and that I would not recover because of the cancer and the chemo. Yesterday my physio watched me walking. Today, she gave me a hug and bade me well.
March 2012 – Thursday 1
Ann and I have been putting this off. Today, we had a meeting with a man from the funeral directors. I think it’s important that I get the type of funeral I want… I have told him I want a camphor laurel coffin. It’s a weed. I think it’s appropriate that my body departs the world this way.
What do you wish to be clothed in? he asks. A grass skirt and a pith helmet, I reply. We all laugh. He tells me he now has enough information.
March 2012 – Tuesday 27
I went to the palliative care doctor today. She doesn’t want to see me for another 12 weeks. Yehhh! She even tells me I can drive short distances, during the day time, not in traffic, when it’s not raining and when I know where I am going. I had been banned from driving, due to the high doses of the drugs I was on.
April 2012 – Wednesday 25
I am up early to sing. I’ve sung a solo, Abide with Me, every year for the last 15 years at the Maleny Dawn Service. I thought when I sang in 2010 that would be the last time. See you next year, says the RSL president. She hugs me. She knows what is going on. The words of the hymn mean a lot to me. I am definitely aiming for next year.
April 2012 – Thursday 26
I received the results from my latest scans today. It really sucks living from scan to scan, but that’s how it is in the big city. There is no growth in the tumors and there are no new tumors. That’s great. Just really great! The scans are confirming what I am feeling in terms of pain, breathing and movement. As they say in that new movie, I might just buy some green bananas… … I think I might make some plans. Just short-term ones, and see if I can’t fulfill them. I want to spend more time with my wife and kids. They light my life.
I want to finish some of my work projects. I have a PhD student who has just started this year. I’d love to see him finish. I have a book I’m writing about my work with a mate of mine from University of Maryland. It’s entitled, Dancing with Dugongs: Having Fun and Developing an Practical Philosophy for Environmental Management.
I’d also like to do something about lung cancer, this bastard of a thing that has been trying to rule my life. I need to raise awareness about it, raise funds, and advocate for more research funds for early detection and treatment.
That’s why I’m sharing this diary with you. I hope you can help.
Check out the Australian Lung Foundation at www.lungfoundation.com.au . Tell your Federal and State politicians that what is happening in terms of lung cancer research just isn’t fair, and that nobody deserves lung cancer… Perhaps, in time, well after my time I am afraid, we may all breathe just a little easier.
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