I’m going to cite a personal interest about the following at the outset. I don’t think it’s a conflict of interest but I’ll let you be the judge.
Years ago, we had a family crisis. Jim, my dad, collapsed in Bendigo with a perforated stomach ulcer. Very messy, very sick and very upsetting for everyone.
Maureen, mum, farmed seven of us out to uncles and aunts, to grandma, and whipped up the Calder to be by his side as he underwent surgery. These were the days before they knew ulcers were caused by a bacteria. Dad had been soldiering on quite crook for a long time.
At the same time, my six-year-old baby brother, at granny’s, was waiting on test results for leg pains we hoped were just growing pains.
Jim, after his surgery, was all good. An impressive row of stitches across his abdomen, several weeks convalescence, even gave up smoking which he blamed, and he was right again.
Damien wasn’t so lucky. His results came back with a stinging negative: acute myeloid leukaemia. Treatment but no cure really likely. This was 50 years ago, back in 1973.
Maureen was belted up pretty comprehensively. We kids were rattled but kind of dumb about it all.
Young Jack as we called him was in for a torrid time; a harsh monthly routine of a week’s chemotherapy and grinding nausea, crook for another two and then if he was lucky a week or so of okay.
All his hair fell out, he looked like a starved PoW out of Changi, he was kept in isolation behind thick sheets of Perspex. A sick little kid who couldn’t hold his mum’s hand. The nurses told me they cried when they had to give him lumbar punctures, over and over and over.
For his part, he never winced or complained. Didn’t realise he was supposed to be scared like normal people.
As he grew older, the things he was missing out on were obvious but he didn’t complain. Found things of interest, went bush any way he could, learned heaps about birds, campaigned for the environment with letters to pollies.
Mad Carlton fan but never got to play. Jezza once came to see him in hospital, Mick Sheahan wrote it up. Old Blues skipper Brucie Comben brought the grand final cup to him one time.
And for all the grief he went through, the nurses and doctors and staff looking out for him at the Royal Children’s Hospital were about the friendliest, kindest and most supportive you can humanly be. He was quite at home there and so were we.
He came good a few times but eventually relapsed later. They couldn’t do a bone marrow safely back then.
Jack lasted 11 years before quietly slipping away behind an oxygen mask late one night with mum and dad and me. He was just shy of his 18th birthday and the longest surviving leukaemia patient on the RCH’s books at the time.
The nurses cried, again. One of the poor girls from school just howled at his funeral – saddest thing I think I’ve ever heard. And all these years later I’m still misty about it myself. Got my own kids now, don’t know how my folks got through it.
So why the conflict? Well, when I’m not scribbling here, I work with people such as Villawood Properties who with Henley Homes will this Friday be auctioning off a house in Lara to raise cash for The Royal Children’s.
It’s a pretty extraordinary effort. Everything’s been donated, the land, the house – all supplied gratis and built free of charge by 150 tradies, suppliers and other donors.
Many of this small army have ties with The Children’s or know family or friends who have. Some have been patients themselves. Many have been through what my tribe went through or worse.
Thing is, whatever they went through, you’ll be struggling to find anyone of them with an unkind word about the devotion, care, understanding and compassion they’ve received over and above the world-class treatment that’s on hand at the hospital.
Which is why I’m suggesting if you’re in the market for a new home, go check this one out.
I’ve seen people who’ve bought them before. They love the house, that’s a given, but there’s always a warm feeling they talk of …
And that’s knowing the biggest investment in their life is being invested in other people’s lives. It’s a conflict of the nicest kind.
Check it out: https://gfacharityhouse.com.au/
This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 4 April 2023
