Narelle’s husband, Jason, shares her story.
I remember the summer of 2017. We went on a family holiday with a group of our closest friends to Berri. It’s a tradition we had down for the previous 3 or 4 years and the adults and kids loved it. We had two children Lily born in 2005 and Archer born 2009. It was towards the end of this holiday that Narelle who was 40 at the time complained of a sore stomach, it was in her lower abdomen. It didn’t stop her from doing any of the activities or smashing down a few champagnes at night time, it was just a niggly thing, like a stomach ache. Her pain threshold was fairly high as most women’s are who have had kids, so I suspect it may have been more than she was letting on.
When we got home from this trip in early January she booked into the doctor to get it looked at. Our local doctor then gave us a referral to get an ‘up the bum’ and ‘down the throat’ check done (there are proper words for this procedure but I have put it in plain English). I believe we got this done in April 2017 and the even though the pictures that were taken weren’t ideal, all biopsies came back negative for cancer and that was a massive relief. I will say lucky for us as this journey could have ended far quicker than it did because the Doctor up here who performed these procedures was not all that convinced that nothing was wrong as the results weren’t telling her what the pictures were so she referred us to St Vincents hospital in Melbourne to use one of their wizz-bang machines to get the full picture. Unbeknownst to us St Vincents would be like a home away from home for us for the next few years and I could not say a bad word about them, everyone was lovely.
It was early October 2017 when Narelle got into St Vincents to be tested and I will be honest neither one of us were terribly worried. How wrong we were. I recall going into the building in the morning and I can’t recall if she had to be put to sleep for this procedure or not, but she woke up in a ward where I was able to greet here and she seemed fine. How naive these two people from country Victoria were. Nothing could possibly be wrong with us, we don’t smoke, enjoy a few drinks on the occasion and have never taken drugs, so when this doctor comes in with a concerned look on her face, shit was about to get real. She informed us that hidden in the wall of her stomach was a rather large tumour which was at stage 4. I was speechless and Narelle was the one holding me together. I remember a conversation we had where I said to her I wish we could swap spots, her reply was you couldn’t handle what I’m about to go through! She was right.
We met her treating doctor down there later that day and the news got no better. She was hard and blunt and delivered the message that she has about a 5% chance of lasting 2-5 years. Our world had just flipped upside down. I’m not a big crier but shit I made up for it that day speaking to family and each of our bosses.
The initial diagnosis was stomach cancer and we then spent a few weeks in Melbourne getting chemo started. We had the attitude that we are that 5% and ‘we will prove you wrong Doc’. So the chemo journey began, which initially was not too bad on Narelle. She kept her hair for the first bout, but then things started to go south with the hair failing out and the nausea getting worse and worse after every bout.
In the November of 2017 we were granted a lifeline of hope. We were given the option of having her complete stomach removed, (who thought you could operate without a stomach) which would remove all the cancer and she could live without a stomach. I knew we would be that 5%.
In January 2018 we were booked in at St Vincents for a full stomach removal and although we were nervous, there was a sense of optimism. The operation lasted for what seemed like 12 hours, but was nowhere near that long and when I saw her in recovery, she had more chords and sh*t coming out of her that I could ever imagine. The doctor came around that night and the operation was a resounding success! I was the happiest man on this planet. I never drink by myself, but I went back to the motel room that night and had a few beers.
The next day whilst in with Narelle two male student doctors came to check on her and said they were part of the group that would now go and analyse the stomach and see where the tumor originated and whatever else they do. It didn’t seem much of an issue at the time, once again how wrong can we be.
A few days later, whilst in recovery our main doctor came in and shut the door with a forlorn look on her face. I’d seen this look before. You could have heard a pin drop when she said the tests of the stomach, that had come back, indicate where it was cut at the top and bottom there was active cancer cells in the tissue where it was cut. So more than likely there is active cancer cells on the other side of the cut that are still in Narelle. Talk about being driven over by a bus twice. Groundhog day has come again. The cancer is elsewhere.
After this, and months of recovery, it was advised to try radiotherapy in Melbourne for 28 days straight, this was to try and kill or nullify the cancer around the tissue. Once again we took hope of us being the 5% so we packed up our lives and left our kids at home with family and friends and moved back to Melbourne for 28 days of radiotherapy. This process took all over 20 minutes a day, so hence we had plenty of time on our hands, or at least I did, as Narelle was still exhausted and was getting used to eating like a baby rather than a 41-year-old female.
2018 was a year I will never forget, as I had a wife who I had been married to since 2000 go from a healthy 72 kgs to now weighing all of 37 kilos, nearly half her body weight. In November of that year, I took a flight to Sydney after a night shift in the police force to meet with a doctor who sold natural therapies to rid cancer. We were willing to try anything. Narelle was our world and the most amazing mother to these two resilient kids.
On my flight home I was retuning with hundreds (maybe even a thousand odd) tablets that she needed to take, but I was met at the airport by one of my best mates. Narelle had been taken to hospital. Her bowel was all blocked and she was in immense pain. The cancer had reached her bowel, she was riddled. She did make me smile by saying “you can shove those tablets up ya ass”. She couldn’t take one, let alone the 40 odd I was going to tell her to take a day!!!!
They gave her some relief by giving her a bag out of her stomach as she can’t use her bowels again. After a week or so in hospital in Mildura she was able to come home. She had had enough. The cancer was everywhere in her stomach, bowel and probably a few other places that we just didn’t want to know about.
Anyone else would have thrown in the towel, not Narelle. She wanted to get to Lilys 14th Birthday on the 15th of March 2019. The next few months leading up to this date bought us more bad days than good, but bloody hell she made it and Lily had the most wonderful day.
I’m struggling writing about this as I’m not good at talking about feelings or Narelle. Anyway, on the 26th of April 2019 she passed away at home whilst holding my hand and the hand of her mother. There was one last breath and then she was gone, any lesser person would have thrown the towel in on numerous occasions, but not Narelle. The cancer in her bowel and stomach won but they did not expect the fight she put up. We didn’t quite make the 5% of 2 years although maybe technically we did, and she had it in January 2017.
Narelle left us all notes when she died, the school teacher in her lives on.
I am pleased to say for anyone reading this that life does go on and the kids are now 20 (nearly 21) and 15 and are the two most caring and resilient kids, and they get that all from their mother. I am pleased to say I have also met someone else (she wrote in her letter to me that I need to find someone else as I’m hopeless by myself and to make sure they love the kids like she did) and the kids adore her like she adores them.
I still think about Narelle a lot, but once again I keep these thoughts to myself but I suppose I’ve now let the cat out of the bag and told the readers also. That’s my heart-breaking story in a small nutshell.
There is a side note to this, that’s equally as heart breaking. Narelle’s best friend who was a rock through all this also got bowel cancer back in 2022 and passed away in December 2024. They will be both up there together sipping champagne with Lady Diana and Queen Elizabeth waiting for the rest of us to arrive.