But by September the next year, Jenny and Stephen could not hide the fact of his illness any longer. But I ended up walking into Wollongong Hospital on the emergency on 12 September and the next day I suffered the paraplegia. Malignant mesothelioma is a form of cancer. It is one which is resistant to all known forms of cancer therapy. Most cancers are unpleasant but mesothelioma is a particularly unpleasant one which is virtually 100 per cent fatal.
Most patients survive for only about a year after diagnosis.
As if the pain wasn't bad enough, Stephen discovered he'd contracted the disease more than 30 years before while works as a labourer on a housing development north of Sydney. He was employed by a now defunct company which had been contracted to do the work by the Sydney Water Board. We were working at a new estate. We did pull those fibro houses down and we scavenged the timber and the fibro to use on the setting up of the formwork and the pipe laying we did for the new estate. So a lot of times we were drilling or jackpicking.