A Husbands Perspective Ð Basil Walker
Isn't it strange that we talk least about the things we think about most?
Charles A Lindbergh
I am the husband of a cancer victim and support any action that will assist in the recognition of, and betterment of matters that are causative of a most major trauma and disruptive period of an individual victim and their family.
Our story is simple and almost surreal as I look back over the years of courtship engagement and then marriage with Claire in a tiny country church with a magnificent country wedding breakfast and dance in the community hall.
Typically we assisted the church in maintenance of their property in lieu of the mandatory wedding donation which was, in modern terms a Òwin Ð winÒ arrangement and a very worthy donation in a non GST environment .
How times have changed, the church remains, so to our marriage but the hall is departed.
The birth of our three sons are reason for admiration, delight, respect and love to strengthen towards my wife and her unselfish effort and unite into a formidable fighting force that we chose as our family direction .
The years flew punctuated with family, summer holidays, sport, construction and education in all forms and now the nest is empty awaiting the return of grandchildren.
I was with Claire as she navigated bravely through the diagnostic process, the silence, emptiness, ache and anger of the eventual diagnosis.
The two hour drive home together was silent but together, the silence was horrific but necessary to try to understand the future, the understanding that Cancer was again in our family was scary beyond belief and unwelcome because of history.
The mastectomy and chemotherapy, resultant complications and disruptions are still painful memories held now on paper files for the public, however the starkly evident scars and the unbalanced femininity cannot hide a battle with the unknown for my wife.
The importance of focus and determination is paramount and I proudly recall Claire courageously delivered her speech at our sons wedding shortly after discharge from hospital with the operation drainage bottle camouflaged behind her outfit.
Our immediate family chose Herceptin for my wife in the blind grasp at anything or everything that would assist to help Claire as she battled not only the disease but the dumbness of humans who are in this educated modern society unable to grasp that a stupid comment is unhelpful and a gushing posy of flowers is meaningless when you do not call or visit after the event.
New Zealand is faced with a dichotomy of epic proportions not commensurate with the size of our population in regard to the treatment of Cancer. Cancer is emotionally charged, a reason for bold front page headlines that sell, however to the victims the word crashes the mind into numbness, disturbs the nighttime with repetition, flashes from printed matter like a neon sign and destroys future aspiration and planning because Cancer demands you wait and hope for the terms of life it delivers.
Incredibly the funding of Herceptin is a political game and therefore bureaucratic and in New Zealand by necessitation is a Government health service. Pharmac and interested parties squirm and sleaze around the subject because it is their job, salary, superannuation and the office that they attend to ensure their obligation to their bank account that is most important not the funding of Herceptin to assist our New Zealand women.
The Internet has enabled linkage to documentation that shows that many thousands of millions of dollars is committed to research worldwide in various forms of cancer with no direction or expediency of the research dollar to singularly address and solve a problem and then collate the data into a cumulative worldwide approach to success.
I am loathe to accept that our ladies health cannot be determined to be as important as any other lady in the world and that if it is acceptable for Commonwealth and United Nations member womenfolk to be acceptable to the Herceptin documentation then which pedestal does Pharmac stand on to deny the funding for New Zealand women .
If only a responsible government would disband this bureaucratic enclave and allocate the funding to medicines and drugs and accept that medical reports and decisions that are acceptable to other developed countries medical specialists will be of greater assistance to our population than denial of treatment.
I therefore request that incredible weighting of your consideration to vote is directed to the party and candidates who have unequivocally stated that they will fund our ladies health care requirement of Herceptin and that clearly does not include the Labour Party.
As a husband and father I have found the journey emotional to the extreme, a previously misplaced understanding of others ethnicity and preferences enlightening but a greater resentment of bureaucracy and the minds that perpetuate it.
Take care, Basil Walker.
He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began.
Leo Tolstoy
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