Chapter 3: “Early Discovery”

9 NOVEMBER 2017 actually began the day before, when the clinic called to say, “Doctor would like to see you tomorrow." The medical practice is heavily booked normally, and the secretary said an appointment had already been scheduled for me, first thing in the morning. There was no denying the numbing portent. The call had the same effect as water for powdered cement mix. I had been carrying a whole bag of it for a few months. Now it was being made stone, solidified, hard, permanent. Not going away too soon.

Me performing at Backyard, KL,
pre-surgery in 2017.

Dr Magar and his fellow practitioners had been our family doctors for more than 15 years, beginning soon after we began living in Oatley. He looked very disturbed that morning. Outside it was the standard, sweltering high of an Australian east coast summer, cloudless, blinding light, steaming cars, burning seats, wet t-shirts, muggy as anything. I had never seen Magar flustered, at a loss for words, drained of his grandfather-like approach to the guy who smoked and drank. My experience of doctors is, they like to shoot the breeze with journalists. Tell them you work for a Rupert Murdoch paper and they smile knowingly. On top of that, I felt like Magar liked me. He can talk a mile a minute with me.

But there he is, lost in contemplating his next best move, upright in his office chair, palms on his knees, staring at the pathology and CT scan reports on his flat screen, probably confirming for the umpteenth time he is not mis-reading the results. I can see red numbers everywhere on his monitor. He normally has his hand on the mouse, scrolling through each page, nodding away with a smile as he clicks on each screen-page. But he’s just sitting there. He must be searching for words.

Then, abruptly, he swivels on his chair, faces me from his desk. “William, I’m afraid the scan shows a tumour on your pancreas.” “Is it malignant?” “We can’t tell with a scan, but almost a hundred per cent.” He rolls over to me, knee to knee, switches his palms to my knees and says: “Don’t think ‘cancer’. Think ‘early discovery’.” That’s all it takes. Less than a minute. Your life changes. Bang! Cancer.

Any sense of hope in those two words, “early discovery”, evaporates when he opens his drawer, takes out an envelope and says, “I’m referring you for surgery. I’ve spoken with the surgeon’s office. They have an opening next week. They will operate on you next Wednesday.” Handing over the envelope, he says, “Here’s the referral.”

“Is it bad?”

“William, it’s major surgery. It’s not a simple thing. Worst-case scenario, they’ll remove your pancreas and you’ll be on insulin the rest of your life.” Pause. "Surgery won’t be easy.” Then: “Look. I have a 35-year-old patient who had the same thing five years ago. He’s fine now. Remember what I say, ‘early discovery’. You’re lucky. You have shown symptoms so we've found it early.”

I can’t speak. So few details. Too much information. All I can manage is a deep exhale. I know I have to get out, break out, escape. Then the grandfather in him speaks: “Maybe you should wait till Monday before you tell Helen. Let her have the weekend.”

Magar knows about Ginny and Peggy. I already know I can’t lie to Helen, not with surgery scheduled in less than one week. I remember wondering if the receptionists outside his room know. But I’m just too exhausted to go there. Most likely they do. Good. So bloody what? I can’t believe I have to get back in my car, drive, stop at t-junctions, keep my eyes peeled at roundabouts, watch out for elderly pedestrians or kids. I look out at the street and my vision has narrowed. I can only see what’s straight ahead. Everything else just doesn’t register, no peripherals. I am at the same time terrified I might cause an accident on the road, and wishing I would just die.

Another strange thought enters. My first family has been spared. They are all gone. Little mercies. Dad left us on 3 December 1963. My elder brother, Errol, succumbed to a heart attack on 10 August 2013. Mum passed away 7 May 2015.

My brother, Errol de Cruz, also at Backyard.

Mum would have been broken beyond repair. Had she been alive, she would not have been able to travel to Sydney to care for me, because of her age, and that would have made it one thousand times worse. Errol’s voice would have been a solace on the phone, but it would have been devastating for him.

Then, it begins, this thing that slowly comes to surround me, enveloping, like an electric charge from out of nowhere. The thought is planted in my mind: You can’t just lay down and die. You have a wife to take care of, and she’s been suffering and coping with death and dying for three years already. Children who’ll be looking up to you as Mum is faced with such pain. Again. She has stood by you through the thickest and the thinnest. She has loved you and cared for you, been your friend, your lover, for coming on 40 years, forgiven the worst of your excesses. This is the woman without whom you would not have been able to afford your first guitar, even before you got married. This is not about you. This cannot be about you. Though it is, it cannot be “you”.

And the train of thought morphs. Don’t worry. Remember that 80-year-old cardiac surgeon you read about, who had lost his wife five years back? He told his neighbour, “If I had worried about the things that I couldn’t control, I’d have been dead years ago.” Don’t worry. There’s no point to that. There are things you can’t control. Just go with the flow.

As we say at Mass: “Only say the word and I shall be healed."