Glenn Brown
My journey began in November 2018. I had been losing weight progressively throughout the year and didn’t have the energy to participate in my usual sporting activities. I am a diabetic and had problems with high blood pressure so my Doctor was adjusting my various medications. However, when I checked my weight (I lost 20kg in 6 months) and I found I was coughing up blood I requested a chest x-ray.
Within two days of receiving the results of the x-ray, I was booked in for a CT scan and had a meeting at the Respiratory clinic at Whangarei hospital. The following week I had a bronchoscopy, then a PET scan and lung cancer was confirmed. In some respects, I was lucky as my cancer was diagnosed as squamous cell which presented as a single tumour on my left lung. The main problem was that it was about the size of a tennis ball.
In early December a meeting discussing my treatment was attended by my Respiratory consultant in Whangarei, radiation and chemotherapy oncologists and surgeons. I was informed before Christmas that surgery wasn’t an option and that I would be treated using chemotherapy and radiation. That treatment started on Anniversary Day 2019 (apparently the only day they don’t do treatment is Christmas Day) and continued for six weeks five days a week.
Radiation treatment was administered every day five days a week. It was easy and comprised of lying still on a bed for ten to fifteen minutes with a machine tracking around my chest zapping the tumour.
Chemotherapy was administered in the first week of treatment and in the fifth week.
Support while receiving treatment
For those from the North needing to stay in Auckland, there is the Domain Lodge which is free to patients and a minimal $20 a night fee for support people. The Lodge is like a motel/hotel and run along similar lines to Ronald McDonald House attached to Starship. All you need to supply is your own food. Patients are booked in for the length of their treatment however if you are away for the weekend they cannot guarantee you will remain in the same room as they occasionally let the rooms like a normal hotel. My father, when the mayor of the Kaipara District, was instrumental in a lot of the funding for the Domain Lodge. He could see the benefit of it for many of his constituents.
The Health Board runs a free daily shuttle from Whangarei to Auckland return. After the first week of treatment, I caught the shuttle home on Friday afternoon to pick-up my car. Also on the trip to Whangarei were a couple who travelled down that morning for a PET scan and a woman who had been discharged from Auckland Hospital.
National Travel Assistance is available for travel for services that are not available in Whangarei, in my case between Whangarei and Auckland for a PET scan, appointments with my Medical oncologist and the radiation treatment.
The treatment and support were absolutely incredible from the staff at the Domain Lodge, the nurses and radiographers at Auckland Hospital and prior to that those in the Whangarei Hospital. During the weeks of radiation treatment, I was able to spend time with my daughter and grandchildren and visit relations and friends around Auckland. At the hospital, they scheduled treatment early on Fridays and late on Monday to allow those patients who lived out of town to go home for weekends.
Invariably the majority of the female patients I talked to were under-taking radiation treatment for breast cancer and the male patients prostate cancer. With chemotherapy, the reason for treatment and effects on the various patients varied however the majority of women were again being treated for breast cancer.
The side-effects
I was told that the chemotherapy treatment would be harsh and the side-effects would be varied. Two weeks after the first week of chemotherapy I wasn’t too bad and my Medical Oncologist couldn’t believe I was still rowing around the Kaipara fishing on the weekends. He suspected I was one of “the one in one hundred” who had few side effects. He had patients who only lasted a couple of days with a similar treatment to mine. I did start to lose my hair shortly after that meeting and had my wife trim it completely so I didn’t have to clear the plug after every shower.
The radiation treatment was so easy I didn’t appreciate the effect it was having on my body. One day I went for a walk down Queen Street to check out the venue of a Whaleoil Sump and struggled to walk back up Queen Street to the Lodge. Needless to say, I didn’t make it to the Sump.
On the last day of treatment, a Friday, I packed my car and was ready to drive home to Whangarei. I felt light-headed when standing but was alright sitting down. After my radiation treatment, I visited the nurses for my final sign-off and had them check me out. They found my blood-pressure differed when sitting and standing. There was no way I was staying in Auckland and I assured the Doctor I would have things checked out when I arrived in Whangarei. On arriving home my daughter who is a GP advised me to see my Doctor if my condition didn’t improve. The following week I ended up in the Whangarei Hospital CCU with a fast heart rate called atrial flutter, anaemia and pneumonia. A weekend of treatment including two bags of blood and a change in my meds saw me discharged to recuperate.
In the end, recuperation took forever. I expected to return to work a month after treatment. I work approximately 25 hours a week giving support to disabled adults but found I was getting home and sleeping more than I was working and had to prolong my leave considerably.
The worst side-effect I encountered was depression. I knew it was coming as I’ve had an instance of major depression before and was able to alert my Doctor to it and started medication early. My daughter recommended an online cognitive behaviour course called “Just a Thought” that she used with some of her patients which I found helpful. I was over the depression prior to Christmas and apart from a mild dose of shingles and the need to improve my fitness everything is looking great for 2020.
My results
While having treatment I had regular meetings with my Medical and Radiation Oncologist. With each radiation treatment, a CT scan is taken so the Oncologist was able to show me the effect the treatment was having on the tumour. After the six weeks of treatment, the tumour decreased in size quite dramatically, I was advised the radiation keeps working for months after treatment. My three-month scan showed a small mass still in my lung and slight damage to my lung from the radiation, then my next three-month scan showed the tumour had gone completely and the lung was repairing itself. I will have future scans six-monthly.
Alternative medicine
In November 2018 when I was first diagnosed with lung cancer I took one of my clients to visit his friends in Hikurangi. While we were there an old acquaintance of theirs, John, called in. He was an interesting guy who they had used a few years prior to divine a better source of freshwater on their daughter’s farm. He carried a long piece of wire, his divining rod, and told some interesting stories, for example, he had been to a political meeting in Kaitaia and could tell whether a person was lying or telling the truth by how his divining rod moved.
Our talk moved to medicine and treatments and our host mentioned I’d just been diagnosed with cancer. John recommended I drink tea made from Puriri tree leaves (it’s quite refreshing incidentally) and explained that he did a treatment for cancer using radio waves. He gave me his phone number and invited me to contact him if I was interested. After he had left our host said that was the first time they had seen John in five years and he didn’t know he was visiting. For that matter, he didn’t know we were visiting either and recommended that I give it a go.
The treatment comprised of placing my phone on different parts of my body, thyroid gland, lung, adrenal glands for a set period of time (no more than 9 minutes a session) while John activated radio waves. I had from memory six sessions. There was no charge for the treatment (the first thing my daughter and her husband, both Doctors, asked was how much I was charged), Johns only request was that I let him know the results of all of my treatment.
Obviously I’ll never know whether the successful treatment of my cancer was a result of the Hospital treatment or John’s. I like to think that it was a combination of both.
The cost of treatment and Pharmac
My daughter attended the first meeting with my Medical Oncologist and asked about alternative treatments to those that I was receiving. They ranged in price between $80,000 and $200,000 and in the majority of cases were funded by medical insurance. These were effectively new treatments and we were advised that the funded treatments would achieve similar results.
The only time we appear to hear about Pharmac is when it is criticized for not funding a certain vaccine or medicine. The craze when I was having treatment was to class it as racist as it appears to be disadvantaging Maori and Pacific Islanders. I can’t for the life of me work that one out.
The only problem Pharmac has is a lack of funding from the Government, even then it still has to make decisions on the price of the drug or whether it funds a certain drug to give patients an extra few years at the expense of funding a drug that completely cures a condition. The cancer drug Keytruda is a good example of this. My understanding is that it is fully funded for the treatment of melanoma where the success rate is very high, but not for the treatment of lung cancer.
Smoking
I have been a smoker for 45 years and have often tried to give up. Surprisingly the type of cancer I have is not often associated with smoking which is probably a blessing as it presented as one tumour as opposed to many. I did, however, decide to stop smoking on the day I started treatment. I used Champix again which takes away the buzz you get from the nicotine. The only side-effect I have from using Champix is very vivid dreams. Regretfully I started smoking again as a crutch when suffering from depression and am trying again to reduce or give up the habit.
Conclusion
The biggest lesson I have learned from this experience is to be aware of how you are feeling and not to be reluctant to have medical checks. By far the most common indicator of cancer is weight loss, loss of energy and with lung cancer coughing up blood. Women should particularly be aware of and have checks for breast cancer and men prostate cancer. The sooner any cancer is diagnosed the better when it comes to treatment and good results.
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