Chris' Story

‘I’ll never complain. I know how lucky I am.’

I’m up to four years now of having stage 4 metastatic pancreatic cancer. Statistically, I shouldn’t be here.

I know I’m very lucky because during my journey, a number of my mates have passed away with the same cancer and I can’t see why I’m any different to them.

I’ve heard of people in the first three to six months of treatment just say, ‘No, I can’t handle this, just let me go’. The initial chemo treatment can feel devastating.

Most pancreatic cancer is caught too late. Everybody’s journey is really different. Everyone’s body is different.

For treatment we’d drive up from White Beach to Hobart, and I’d stop at every toilet along the way and either vomit or have diarrhoea. It was horrendous. And it’s a long drive, too. We were doing it a couple of times a week. In the end, it was doing more harm to Chriss, my wife, than the treatment was doing to me.

It sounds all right to jump in the car and drive up, but most of it was overnight. At that stage, we were staying in a motel. You gather your gear and pack the bags, multiple bags, get up to Hobart, unpack the bags from the car, then unpack the bags in the unit, have treatment, then the next morning repeat that process all over again. It was an effort week after week for nearly three years!

So, we decided to sell our rural property and move closer to town.  We received a good price for our house, we helped our daughters a little and we bought a nice red car. A little red Corvette.

It’s not a typical story for people going down this path. I get a bit embarrassed about it, but we take it to a few car shows and people start ripping into me about, ‘you’re a bloody rich old bit’. So, I say, you can think that, but here’s the real story and mention that apart from being near end of life we’ve also worked hard for this.

As far as my cancer diagnosis is concerned, I have coeliac disease, so I’ve always had gut problems. I was having some pain, and it was a bit different to my coeliac pain. So, I had a gastroscopy. After it was done, the Gastroenterologist said: ‘You’re all right, no worries for you’. I left it for a while, but I wasn’t happy because I was in pain.

I’ve never ever gone and received a second medical opinion before, but this time I did. After the second scope proved clear the Gastroenterologist sent me for a scan to try to determine where the pain was coming from, and Pancreatic Cancer was picked up.

If I had just accepted the first scan maybe I would have been too far into Stage IV Metastatic with more spread of the disease and the outcome might have been different again. We blokes often dismiss pain hoping it will come right.

We see a fantastic Oncologist at the Icon Cancer Centre; he was previously at Calvery St John’s Hospital. I have become very connected to him, and I suspect these professionals form great caring relationships with their patients.

I remember that during the first few years with our Oncologist, our eldest daughter came to almost every appointment, for which we are very grateful. Our second daughter came along occasionally as well. They would ask appropriate questions, and he’d happily say, ‘Well this is what I think, but let’s have a look’ and he’d go and research it in front of them. He was and is very open to any suggestions that we made. Our third daughter has been a regular visitor from interstate and not a week goes by where she doesn’t touch base with me.

Our Oncologist would give me options for treatment and tell me the pros and cons of each. He’s very adaptable and highly intelligent. He was taking me down the path of one that he thought would be the best for me. But he said, ‘I’ll ring up my peers and see what they think’. I believe that is real professionalism.

I think after about three years of treatment, my Oncologist asked if I wanted to go on a particular treatment, a parp inhibitor, it was not on the PBS so very expensive. It meant I had 10 months without chemotherapy, and I felt like a new person during that time. We had hoped to have longer on it, but eventually the disease overcame the treatment.

Many people say, ‘well, you must be a strong-minded and positive person’, but I think I’m just lucky. I’ll never complain. I know how lucky I am.

I have quite a good rapport with the other patients at the Icon Cancer Centre as I had at St John’s Hospital. I take my intravenous trolley and have a chat to them. The nurses at all these facilities are sensational at their job and take a real interest in each patient’s life outside the facilities. I don’t feel awful being in there for hours and hours, I try to make it a happy place.

Chris’ wife adds: ‘He walks out from having treatment with a smile on his face, and he tells you all these stories, it’s just so good to know. Makes it easier for you, absolutely.’

I have a mutant gene, PALB2, which was passed on to me by one of my parents. I’ve passed it on to one of my daughters. One of my sisters also picked up the gene and it has been passed on to one of her children. They’re all now at a higher risk of pancreatic cancer, breast cancer and ovarian cancer. I think there is a 60 or 70 per cent increase in breast cancer if you’re carrying this mutant gene.

I’m happy with the way things are going. If I fell over next week, I’d die with a smile on my face.

I thought it was all over four years ago, but I’m still here, still smiling.

I am so lucky!