Fighting Prostate Cancer – Part 2
Click jmage for the Index of Greg's Prostate Cancer Chronicles
Being a Blogger, I found it pretty natural to write about my experiences and I soon felt confident in discussing the problems as they arose. This created a chain of events that saw me achieve remission.
The first link in the chain was Brad Worrell, the reporter with the Albury daily newspaper, The Border Mail. Brad had been following the local Blogs as part of his news gathering and asked if he could write an article about my fight with prostate cancer.
To Brad Worrell, I am eternally gratefull for writing that piece – without it, I would not have found this path to remission.
His article (which can be read here) spawned reactions from various other cancer sufferers – one who offered an aboriginal remedy being Gumbi Gumbi (which I wrote about here). I tracked down the source and found that Gumbi Gumbi comes from the Lilly Pilly Tree and has proven effective on any cancer except bone cancer – which is what I had.
The second – and key – contact came from Sydney suburbs when Dianne Street, a long term blood cancer survivor, with Lymphoma, was sent a copy of the Border Mail article and felt an affinity with me offering me the secret of her longevity. This lady had been through the mill with bone marrow transplants, platelet transplants, chemotherapy and radiation. Yet, she put her survival down to a couple of natural supplements – even her specialists were amazed and told her, “Whatever you are doing, keep it up!”
Save our clinics
Valley residents ‘furious’ GP support is being withdrawn
Written by STEVE KELLY. (archived from Wangaratta Chronicle 20 Nov 2009)
WHITFIELD and Moyhu residents yesterday vowed to do everything they can to keep a medical clinic in each of their towns.
Around 50 local residents met with Bill Sykes (MLA, Benalla), concerned by Ovens and King Community Health Service’s (OKCHS) announcement that it will withdraw its support of the GP clinics in 2010.
OKCHS has supplied support services to the one-day a week clinics in the form of free reception and nursing staff for 10 years, but at its annual general meeting last week it deemed it could no longer afford to foot the cost.
And although doctors at both clinics are yet to decide on the fate of operation beyond December 31, residents want to get proactive to ensure the services stay.
Cheshunt milk bar owner, Cathy Van Gastelen, will chair a small group which will gather information identifying the impact on communities if the clinics were to close.
And the group will also meet with OKCHS in an attempt to have some questions addressed.
Whitfield resident Barbara Westmacott said many locals were “furious” that OKCHS was ceasing its support, without any community consultation.
“People are cross there are plenty of clinics open in Wangaratta and those in Whitfield and Moyhu might have to go without,” Ms Westmacott said.
“The Whitfield doctor, Chris Lorenze, is very much loved and well respected and it would be sad to see him go.“
Ms Westmacott said the distance to travel if both doctors can’t find a way to bridge the financial gap would be too far and strenuous for many residents who are elderly and need carers.
Comment:
This is an abomination. Ovens and King have progressively withdrawn a full time nurse, a community bus service, a community car for medical support and finally the medical servioce itself. They are putting money before people’s health
Mirabella statement on water – 18 Nov 09
Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
We have had a disastrous decision by the Victorian government to build a pipeline, commonly called the north-south pipeline, the construction of which has almost been completed. It is to take water from the already strained Murray-Darling Basin in the north and send it south to Melbourne for human consumption. We have seen the federal government complicit in the irresponsible reallocation of water from this stressed part of Victoria to Melbourne. The Rudd government has been careful to pretend to distance itself from stage 1 of the proposal, which was the north-south pipeline, although the environment minister approved stage 1 of the project under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. The water minister recently issued an ultimatum to the Victorian government threatening to withhold a promised $1 billion of funding if the Victorian parliament does not pass a bill relating to the north-south pipeline, which is blatant blackmail of state MPs in Victoria who are representing the concerns of country Victorians.
The savings generated from this upgrade of irrigation channels in stage 2 are supposed to be shared between environmental flows and local irrigators. Stage 1 works were to generate water savings to service the pipeline to Melbourne. It is inexplicable for the water minister to now be making stage 2 funding conditional on the actions of non-Labor MPs who happen to be opposed to water being piped to Melbourne. There is local concern about this, and obviously both state and federal governments do not really care because it does not seem to affect them electorally, irrespective of their responsibility to govern for all Victorians and all Australians.
We have the disastrous policy by the Victorian state government to have no more dams. They want to increase Australia’s population but they have absolutely no idea and no plan for one of the basic, vital needs of a growing population—that is, water. So they come up with all this rhetoric but have no plans. We have seen the desalination plant—another disastrous proposal for the environment and for future taxpayers. We have seen the financing arrangements through the PPP, which will be poor value for taxpayers. And the list goes on. Unfortunately, Labor is a disaster for water and for country communities. (Time expired)
Comment:
I think most country people will be behind Sophie on this one. Whilst Melbourne needs the drinking water, it is now two generations that governments have neglected the water infrastructure. Two generations ago, Australia’s population was about half what it is today. Yet no new reservoirs or alternate sources of water have been developed to meet the ever growing population of Australia. Taking it from the country’s food bowl reduces the capacity of the nation to feed itself. I guess, if they freeze the people out of the food bowl area, they will have enough water to supply the eastern states capital cities. That is probably why the government has been intent on transferring the food bowl to the north of Australia.
Sophie against Bill of Rights
Statement by Members – 16 November 2009 – 6.43pmBill of Rights Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I rise today to comment on the government’s proposed moves towards a bill of rights. As a member of the Liberal Party, a party founded as the champion of individual rights and liberties against the state—and we have seen since the formation of the Liberal Party a growing state interfering with people’s rights—it is of great concern. I have received several petitions, which are not in the official form accepted by the parliament, from locals concerned about a proposed bill of rights. We have seen what has happened in Victoria, where there is a similar bill of rights regime. We have seen it being abused by criminals and rarely used for the greater good. But of great concern is why the government has not explained why a bill of rights is necessary. What deficiencies are there in existing laws? We have seen countries that can only be described as totalitarian regimes with bills of rights, but they in fact do not guarantee people’s rights. We do not want to see a shift of power from elected representatives, who are responsible to the people, to unelected judges. The community is already angry at the judgments being given out to very serious criminals that do not reflect community standards, and there will be a shift of power to judges with a bill of rights. We have seen that, when the Left is in power and they introduce a bill of rights or similar legislation, there is in fact a limiting of liberty, not an extension of it.
Comment:
Sophie is against transferring power from the elected representatives to the judges and asks, “What deficiencies are there in existing laws?”
What about the abuses of the “Forgotten Generation” to whom we apologised yesterday and the mistreatment of aboriginees, for which we also apologised, and which occurred under the control of elected representatives – both Liberal and Labor. I submit a Bill of Rights administered by Judges could not be any worse.
King Valley medical crisis
Update 17 Nov
The crisis with the King Valley losing their medical clinics has been brought about by a ruling by the Taxation Office that Community Health Centres can no longer operate as Non-Profit Organisations and the requirement that they all must become Corporations.
As Corporations, they no longer have access to government funding to subsidise private medical clinics in areas not otherwise serviced by the medical profession. In this case, Ovens and King – under corporate law – believe subsidising these two clinics ” ... has a negative impact on the long term viability of OKCHS”.
Ovens and King will continue to provide part time District Nursing, Allied health and Maternal & Child Care Health Services as these personnel are on the O&K payroll for which they do receive government funding. The nurses provided to the medical clinics are permanent employees of O&K and would be subsidised by the government. That leaves the receptionist to be funded with about $96 provided by the doctors. How much more is required to pay her wages.
It seems to me that this crisis could be easily averted by O&K using current fully funded personnel to operate one day a week at Moyhu and Whitfield instead of abandoning these communities over a bookwork entry. Better still, they should employ the receptionist on a 2/5 permanent wage and everybody would be happy.
In abondoning doctor’s services in the King Valley, OKCHS are in breach of the mission statement: “ensure equitable services to those most in need;“
Ovens & King Community Health abandons the King Valley
Ovens and King Community Health Service (O&K) have sent a letter to their clients advising that they are withdrawing the doctor’s services from Whitfield and Moyhu at the end of the year.
O&K, now a Company, can no longer subsidise the reception and nursing services for the locums who come there for half a day each week. You see, it’s all about money.
It is reported that the doctors pay O&K $6 per patient. In four hours the doctor would see about 16 patients returning $96 to Ovens and King towards the half day’s wages to the receptionist and nurse. The amount required to subsidise these wages could hardly affect the long term viability as they claim in their letter.
Somewhere along the way, O&K have stopped being a community service and have become a company and they justify their decision to pull out with,
Under the corporations Act 2001, our Board (of) Directors are required to certify the solvency of OKCHS on an annual basis. The cost that the Company incurs in providing these services to support the private GP’s clinics can no longer be sustained as it has a negative impact on the long term viability of OKCHS
This is blatently putting profit making ahead of the health of the communities affected and must be challenged on every level. It has to involve the Federal Government as Bulk Billing and Medicare are involved, it must involve the State Government who oversee Community Health Centres and it must involve the Wangaratta Council as the burden of getting these people into other doctor’s in Wangaratta is impossible as they have mostly closed their books to new patients.
Hardest hit will be the elderly in the upper King Valley as far out as Rose River and Tatong (90k from Wangaratta) who, whilst they could make their way to Whitfield with the aid of neighbours, will have no way to get to Wangaratta except by the bus service that runs from Cheshunt three days a week leaving them stranded in the city until the bus returns at 3 pm.
I understand that the locals are furious and have already sought assistance from State and Federal members of Parliament. A public meeting at the Swinburn Pavillion (Whitfield Recreation Reserve) has been mooted. There will be more to report on this issue.
Fake refugees on Oceanic Viking
The news that the Tamil refugees on the Oceanic Viking have been living in Indonesia for up to five years destroys their claim of refugee status and Australia must not accept them.
Refugees are not “tourists”. Refugees are seeking a safer place than their own country. Having found safe haven in Indonesia, arriving by ‘normal’ means and registered with the Indonesian government as refugees, they do not have the right to select their country of destination. That makes them tourists.
Australia cannot accept these refugees on humanitarian grounds – they should apply to migrate through the normal channels.
Halucinations
Click image for Border Mail background story ...
My stay in hospital (cont.)
When my doctor turned up on day 1 of my morphine detox program, he injected about 5ml of Ketamine anesthetic into my stomach. Within a minute, I started to become disoriented – as in being drunk.
Within five minutes, I was halucinating. My field of vision became two dimensional. The hospital ward and my body appeared to be in a horizontal plane and I didn’t know if I was looking at an image in my mind or whether it was real. I had to feel for my body parts to locate them in my mind’s image.
They inserted a small canula into my stomach connected to a 50 ml syringe of the ketamine controlled by a pump. For the entire stay, this ketamine infusion continued. Every few days for two weeks, they increased the strength and as the anaesthetic built up in the system, the pain was all but eliminated. The side effect was the dulling of the brain, loss of memory and shortness of breath – a relatively pain free state whilst maintaining a limited awareness.
It is used for operating on children and is apparently used as a vetinary anaesthetic. If I was in extreme pain on my death bed, I would be looking for this process at a really high dose to ease my passing.
Breaking the morphine habit
Click image for Border Mail background story ...
The week at the Benalla Hospital turned into three – I got home to see the Grand Final. As predicted, they have removed the morphine from my system but, as sure as hell, it has done nothing to ease the pain.
You see, when the blood PSA count returned to 1.0, my Urologist declared the cancer to be in remission. The latest nuclear scan showed no new activity in the bone metastases. Therefore, my doctor declared that, in remission, there can be more pain, Well I say bullshit to that!
They have sent me home with a narcotic patch which tricks the brain into making other medications confuse the morphine receptors. Another tablet to take when I wake up in pain to prevent panic as I try to deal with the pain over the next hour along with Panadol as the basic pain medicaton. I am definately less functional that when I walked into the hospital.
Greg’s annual holiday
Click image for Border Mail background story ...
Tomorrow, I am to be booked into the Benalla Hospital for about a week but you won’t notice a difference because I haven’t been up to posting much lately.
I have been on morphine since my prostate cancer was diagnosed back in April 2008. As time goes by, the body becomes immune and the dosage has to be increased. The current dose is 100 mg both morning and evenings with liquid shots as required to manage the pain breakthrough.
The objective is to infuse some other pain killer through a tube into the stomach whilst my body adjusts to going without the ‘Hillbilly Heroin”. I have been told that it is not a comfortable time and that the side effects are a build-up of fluids and an increase in appetite. I am genuinely not looking forward to the process. They say this process resets the pain receptors so that less medication is rquired to manage the pain.
From the outside, it probably looks just like one more medical procedure but from the patients standpoint, it is just another reminder of the disease that is wasting you away.
