ENTER THE WORLD OF DOOR ART

MY ART / CANCER STORY

Art the best therapy except for a new baby girl.

On Jan 28th 2019 my beautiful brain sent me a sign telling me something was wrong she almost snapped every finger back on my left hand this lasted for 5 mins, I have never experienced pain like it in my life. My wife called an ambulance, I was told it was my choice to go to hospital which was like um yer take me please, I couldn’t go to the Austin as it was overloaded so off to Box Hill, 2hrs in Emergency waiting alone till I was admitted.

My Doctor was younger than my daughter and had a senior doctor with her she started my Neuro exam and the senior doctor (who was the head of ER I found out later) told her to stop and take notes. 10mins later she said you are being admitted to Neuro now, a CT scan tonight and an MRI tomorrow morning there is something very wrong here, we need to get this sorted.

And so, began my first ever admission to Hospital and the re-set of my life to Day 1.

Day 2 12:30am CT Scan shows Lesions on the brain, told not to worry many hours of crying ensue, thank god for Messenger.

Day 2 11:30pm MRI shows 4.5cm Brain Tumour right frontal lobe many more hours of crying ensue as my wife had left at 8:00pm.

Day 3 Transferred to Epworth, meet Neurosurgeon and his Practice manager at 8:00pm to discuss the surgery, meet my anesthetist at 11:00pm

Day 4 2.5hr surgery to remove the tumour which turned out to be a GBM Stage 4 Wild I suppose if you’re going to have your first surgery it may as well be Top Shelf, then ICU.

After my surgery and recovery, I commenced 42 days of Chemo and Radiotherapy. This created a lot of time where I wasn’t able to leave the house, and I was tired a lot and not thinking straight so I started to unpack my drawings and started to setup a studio where I could draw and just take my thoughts away from the changes to my life. It was apparent very early that I wasn’t going to be able to return to IT. Focal seizures in my left arm happen more frequently when in stressful situations and just being in Melbourne city is enough to set one off. Whilst not painful it does leave me tired and feels like a step backwards not forwards.