Letter to the Editor, Tuesday April 19, 2016

A message for Dee's cancer

You're a prick. For six months you've owned us. You've smashed us as one bad piece of medical diagnosis was delivered after the other. You showed yourself to Dee and me as you bulged in two massive lumps on her back - the size of a lemon and orange - seemingly desperate and delighted to push out of her skin.

But that was just a taste of you, wasn't it? The biopsy had dragged your bastard cells to the surface and you grew in the limelight. Like you were on a super steroid and you absolutely laughed in our faces, knowing that it was just indeed a taste of you.

Inside was where all your dirty work was being done, wasn't it? The engine that shrunk Dee to 35, maybe 36kg.

Dee's painful screams were a testament to that filthy toil. Inside her. You and all your 'invincible' glory. The unbeatable.

And you had us, both. You flattened us both. Dee desperate on a bed in hospice and me exhausted and with near lost hope. Wonderful hospice staff tending to us both.

And through it all you've had your messengers, haven't you? Your 'peeps', who delivered word to us of the coming glow of invincibility that would just not stop. Lots of words. Powerful, painful words: "Terminal no chance get your affairs in order ... metastatic ... three to five weeks you need a miracle ... do not resuscitate".

Well I have a message for you, Mr Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma. We're not done yet. It's our turn. It's her turn.

How's it feel? How's that Keytruda feel, mate? You're not looking the best ... we saw your pain 10 minutes after it first went in. It scared you, didn't it? The first taste of a medicine that would be a "miracle" if it worked. We could tell though. Dee felt you, oh she felt your pain.

When we pulled off the motorway and injected her with 50mg oxycodone and 6mg Medazolam that wasn't for your benefit. It wasn't to try to ease your pain. The game had changed, and when a power shifts there's often pain.

Beautiful people like my mum and Brenda sat in the back, four hands squeezed together in terror as they could only watch Dee arch in agony. But this was different. This pain came from a deep place where the cancer had once been and gone, and had marched on in all glorious super aggression. This time though, Dee felt your pain.

Today, one of those lumps. The bigger one, well it's gone. The other is a shadow of its former self.

Well, mate, that was just the beginning. Today, as a sporting heads up, we scheduled three more rounds of that. Enjoy. She's coming after the rest of you.

Today we saw the CT scan results that showed we have you on the run. Today we started to truly believe in the miracle word that more and more people are whispering Deanna's way.

It's time to fund Keytruda. It's time to fund it for all cancers.

$10,000 every three weeks is not fair. Man made this disease. But Deanna is having to pay in every single way.

So I move on from my message to the cancer. We're winning that battle for now. My message is for the New Zealand government.

Come June or July this year, if you fund Keytruda for only melanoma you are sentencing others to a needless death. My message is simply "No" to that.

And a final message to family and friends. Hospice now seems so long ago. Dee's 24-hour pump medication has nearly halved. I've gone from delivering on top of the pump some 16 mixed subcuts a day to not having given her one single injection in over three weeks.

Thank you for your support and believing in Dee when she said she's got this.

A long, long way to go, but truly wonderful news. Right here, right now, we're on top.

GREG ROBERTSON

Auckland