FROM ABOUT August 2017, I had coped with two symptoms that visited daily, day after worrisome day, every time my waste disposal system came into play. My urine was constantly like teh-o, black tea. Awful bowel movements were forced on me soon after every meal. I was wretched, persistently tired. Cold fear was a constant companion. Puffing on a cigarette drained my energy. My body was screaming, something’s seriously wrong. I was very sick. I did not tell anyone, not even my wife. I couldn’t.
For as long as fate would allow, I would not further test my wife, add to the emotional wreckage of watching two sisters in Sydney pass away under very painful circumstances. Her siblings were already living in Sydney when we migrated from Malaysia with our two little boys in 1990. Before all this, in 2007, another sister, Dorothy, died of breast cancer.
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| Dorothy with Sara in 1995. |
The elder sister in Sydney, Ginny, was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia in January 2014, and passed away in December 2015. Peggy relapsed into breast cancer six months after Ginny’s passing, in 2016. By the time of my symptoms in late 2017, Peggy knew for months that the illness was incurable, her time was finite.Peggy told me about her relapse one morning when I was home alone. She said she didn’t want Helen to know for the time being; it had barely been a few months since Ginny’s passing. I look back at this encounter now, and I see that this was the first time I witnessed the extraordinary power a human being is able to conjure when faced with the most dire of personal circumstances.
Peggy had just been told of her relapse. And she was putting her baby-sister ahead of herself. Helen would come to know within a fortnight, with Peggy’s approval.
Up to this point in my life, I had been hospitalised thrice, decades apart. The first was for circumcision, when I was less than two years old. It was not done for any sort of personal belief my parents held, but to take away the pain every time I had to urinate. Mum has told me it was excruciating for me, and terrible for her and Dad, who could only watch. Circumcision was not a choice. |
| Ginny with Sara in 1995. |
Fast-forward to the early 90s, and I needed orthodontic surgery to remove parts of a cracked wisdom tooth and a bit of my jaw, the result of a botched attempt by a root-canal specialist too eager to get to the next patient. A year or two later, I underwent an operation for a hernia. Both these procedures were, in practical terms, considered “day surgery”, with no overnight hospital stay needed as standard operational procedure. Other than that, I had not been admitted to a hospital.
Then came the diagnosis that turned my life around. I was booked in for critical surgery seven days ahead. We didn’t know it that Thursday, 9 November 2017, but Peggy would be gone by the time of that scheduled operation.
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Since turning 50 in 2007, in the southern Sydney suburb of Oatley, with its tree-lined wide streets, I underwent annual blood testing, the occasional x-ray and clinical checks on my lungs and heart. My GP said I had “the constitution of a man in his 30s” — no diabetes, no high blood pressure, no cholesterol issues and, despite the smoke and drink, clear lungs and liver.
I played badminton with people more than 10 years my junior — we called ourselves The Baddies. I’d bounce around the court as they fought to catch their breath. I could last three consecutive sets, no problem, looking at more, against their needing to sit out every other 15-point run. And they didn’t smoke.
In 2012, after quitting a senior sub-editor’s position with The Australian, News Corp’s masthead Down Under, I also took long, brisk walks nearly every day, stopping only to use the open-air exercise yard by the man-made lake in Hurstville Grove.
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Hurstville Grove, a favourite waterfront
destination on my walks around Oatley. |
Five years later, on a blistering, southern-summer late morning in Oatley, the doctor told me a tumour had been discovered at the top end of my pancreas. More likely than not, it was malignant. The closest thing to a medical confirmation came about two weeks later, when the co-ordinating nurse at Royal North Shore Hospital said: “As far as medical science is able to confirm, you have a malignant tumour on your pancreas.”
My one confidant in the preceding months, Google, had already narrowed the origin of my symptoms down to either the liver or pancreas.
Recommending urgent medical consultation, it only pointed to serious illness and, in the cold, hard, matter-of-fact manner of the world’s best search engine, the likelihood of a terminal condition.
At the height of my symptoms, between late October and November, Helen and I were in Kuala Lumpur, visiting friends and relatives. We had planned the trip months before, to temporarily escape a situation in which all we could do was watch someone die, too soon after another loved one had succumbed.
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| Peggy Heng. |
Days before we left Sydney, I had offered Helen the idea that we could just cancel that two-week break in Malaysia. It was her sister, I said. I would stay to be by her side. It was just money. Her response was immediate, certain, immovable. “I have to go, otherwise I’ll just go mad and break down and what good will I be to anyone then?”
In KL, I met up with a cousin, a surgeon. Over banana-leaf rice at Kanna’s Curry House, along Jalan Gasing, Petaling Jaya, Dr John Emmanuel Fernandez could tell I had a yellow pallor. Jaundice was part of whatever condition I was in. “But, it could be anything,” he said, “the liver or the pancreas.”
Tests could be arranged to pinpoint what was happening. But John also knew medical protocol would require my GP back in Sydney to ask that I undergo the same procedures in Australia, before treatment or intervention. I was desperate to find out, end the agony of not knowing, be among my people to cope with the news, whether or not I would tell them. The sense in John’s comeback was undeniable: “Will, you have to undergo treatment back in Australia. Am I right?” I spoke with Gerald Henry, another surgeon in the family. Gerald is married to my cousin Lucille. Same thing. Basically, they were both telling me, “Look, you’re here on holiday with your wife, so just enjoy what you can and tackle it in Sydney.” The considered, professional opinion was, a few days of waiting would not present any critical risk.
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"Man Proposes": From left, Uncle Joe, me, my cousins
Matthew and John, and Aunty Florence, in Cheras, KL,
during the 2017 trip when only John knew of my symptoms.
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Without Helen knowing, I called the Sydney clinic from KL and made an appointment for a consultation the first working day after we would arrive back in Sydney. We returned on a Saturday night. I had one day to rest, during which, of course, I could not rest. Not knowing is exhausting. I finally saw Dr Medhat Magar of Oatley Healthplus to present my symptoms on 6 November 2017, a Monday afternoon. The doctor called for immediate blood testing. Wednesday, they called back. I had to undergo a CT scan. It was arranged for that very afternoon. Helen knew about the tests, but not my symptoms, not the fear. I locked the door every time I used the toilet in the last two months, ensured there always was air freshener.
Thursday morning, the report on the scan was in. That’s when the clinic phoned, 8 November 2017. So, when I took myself to see Magar, to hear about my diagnosis, and maybe prognosis, Helen was with Peggy, part of the bedside vigil at her sister’s apartment. As far as she was concerned, though, these were routine tests. I was, after all, 60 years of age.
I loved my wife. I was trying everything I could to delay telling her I was most likely in deep trouble. The news was simple and devastating: Sorry, just when you thought you could begin to try moving on, you’ll have to nurse a seriously ill husband. And that’s the good news. The bad news is, yes, I’m sorry, I may also be dying.
I was hoping fate would keep my secret at least till after Peggy’s passing and farewell. Timing is everything, and I was off by days. I had my pathology results, surgery was already scheduled. I had to tell Helen that day shall become night, again. We think we are masters of our destiny. It’s a human condition, that conceit. Truth is, as Uncle Joe always says, “Man proposes, God disposes.”
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| Sunset over Oatley: Backyard view from my bedroom balcony. |
