What I am grateful for, yes, grateful. This includes finding my cancer buddy Sam.
I started this list in August 2018. I'd been told 10 months earlier that I had about a year left, as there were no other available treatments for metastatic liver cancer. But later in 2017 a new treatment was found and I started it in January 2018, possibly pushing my "final run" out - if it worked. It seems to have worked for 16 months but may be failing now. Even so I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be the first in WA to access nivolumab immunotherapy for this type of cancer. It has been a treatment with very manageable side effects.
I want this list read out at my funeral - which I started planning in late 2017.
My loving partner Tom and my caring son Khalil. Since the cancer was first diagnosed in 2016, both have been pillars of kindness and support. Tom has attended most medical consultations with me, contributing constructively to the discussion with doctors and helping me with decision-making afterwards. At my request he has gently encouraged me to keep up with a daily walk as long as possible. Khalil has kept abreast of medical developments - thanks to WhatsApp - and made so much time for me in his busy work and family life, letting me spend as much time as possible with his delightful sons, whom I love so very much.
I’ve acquired some cancer buddies over the course of my time with cancer. There’s a strong connection between us, even if we have a different type of cancer, have experienced different treatments or are different ages. In particular thank you Sam for your friendship. Our shared love of plants, gardening and the bush has been so enriching.
I am also eternally grateful for the amazing care I have received at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. A great public hospital that has saved my l life twice, once when I was 48 and again when I was 66. My hepatologist and his clinical nurse consultants, Megan Collins and Candice Ingwersen have been so responsive and supportive over the past 3 years. The nurses at the Intravenous Treatment Lounge were caring and efficient during my fortnightly visits for immunotherapy. Thank you all.
I have had some amazing opportunities in my life and am so grateful for these:
A scholarship to Camberwell Girls Grammar School in Melbourne where so many doors opened – allowed me to follow my passions to university. Without this scholarship my parents could not have afforded private school education.
My life has been so much richer for having met my former husband, the late Syed Ibrahim - and of course for having given birth to, and raised Syed Khalil, the son we made together. I am glad that I lived in Malaysia as a member of an extended Malay family. Though not always easy, it gave me a chance to understand the Muslim religion and the Malay culture from the inside and to “properly” grow up, away from my own family, and long before the internet and cheap international phone calls.
With friend On Su-ming we opened Malaysia’s first health food shop, Sunflower, in Ipoh, of all places. With another friend Sandra Lee, we established a child care centre, Sesame Corner, for pre-school children, based on education through play, unlike anything available in Ipoh at the time, but not unlike many Australian kindergartens.
I’ve had lots of adventures. I’ve been scuba diving on some of the most beautiful coral reefs off the west and east coasts of Malaysia. And I briefly piloted a Piper Cherokee and helped land it at Melaka airport. Very exciting. How amazing it has been to visit so many parts of the world – from Japan and Vanuatu to Scandinavia, Italy, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
I am also glad I've had opportunities to explore closer to home - in many parts of Australia and New Zealand. To camp in some of the most beautiful places in the world – in remote Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory with friends from the Subaru Club. To discover the Perth Hills with the Hills Hash House Harriers – not that I could ever run. The bush walks have been wonderful, and so has the company.
(I think) I am glad to have become addicted to family history, thanks to the inspiration of cousins I got to know after moving to Perth. It has been the most absorbing of interests, motivated by my love of mystery and exercising my research and analysis skills. To really understand who I am, I have learned about those who have gone before me. To my friends at the WA Genealogical Society, especially the Irish group and the Western Ancestor journal – thank you all for your fellowship and support.
I am ever so thankful that I was born at a time when university education was becoming more accessible for women and arrived in a loving family that did not hold me back - even though neither of my intelligent parents had had similar opportunities.
I have appreciated the mentors I had in the WA public service, particularly Jenny Bunbury, Jane Brazier and Heather Brown. They encouraged me and supported my re-invented career in Perth from 1986, and again, in 1998, after severe pneumonia left me with permanent lung damage.
To my friends in the respiratory health community in Perth, thank you for your friendship, encouragement and support, especially the Institute for Respiratory Health, and the members of L I F E, the lung support group I joined in 1998. I went on to lead this group from 2009 with founder Edna Brown, then, on my own after she became very ill and passed away. Thank you Sal, June, Raema, Sarah, Tom, Mary, Jan, Rosemary, Gaye, Ina, Irene, Elaine.
For your support and fellowship I thank leaders of other WA respiratory support groups, particularly Melissa Dumitru, Jan Thair and Janelle Griffiths.
I have been fortunate to live in a caring community among the purple jacarandas of West Leederville. My neighbours became friends and their friendship has sustained me. Thank you Jan, Michael, Pat, Gill, David, Jeanette, Raymond, Melita, Christine.
I have been so fortunate to have been able to walk away from the paid workforce at 55 and spend more than a decade in a new career as an active volunteer for many organisations: as a health consumer representative for the Health Consumers Council, the leader of a self-help group for people living with chronic lung conditions, leader of the Irish Special Interest group at the WA Genealogical Society and as a simulated patient in the University of Western Australia School of Medicine. So much fun and a genuine sense of satisfaction.
Two factors brought me to the lucky position of an early retirement: my late ex husband Syed Ibrahim’s fair and reasonable Muslim divorce settlement and my own relatively frugal life style (Sorry Khalil. Turns out I didn’t have to make my funds last as long as I thought). So in an odd way I am glad cancer has shortened my life so that I could be reassured that my superannuation would be enough to last me out!
I am strangely glad I won't live long enough to get dementia or severe hearing loss that would both separate me so much from family, friends and community – from people.
In the words of Albert Facey, I have truly had a truly fortunate life. Thank you all for being a part of it.
