100km March for Pete

“A family is a risky venture, because the greater the love, the greater the loss... That's the trade-off. But I'll take it all." — Brad Pitt

We hear tragic stories nearly every day. Some of these stories hit you harder than others. But never do you imagine that such devastation that irrevocably changes the course of your life will ever darken the doorway of your home or family. Until it does.

Peter (51), my husband of 12 years and father to our two children (Abbi – 11 and Ruben – 7), had been experiencing discomfort and gastric symptoms for well over 7 months that were put down to the fact that he had had a long-term history of reflux and was also “just getting old”. It was only by his own insistence that in addition to a routine colonoscopy he also have an endoscopy to investigate the prolonged issues he had been experiencing.

In April 2023, our family received the devastating news that Peter had stage III stomach cancer. This is a relatively rare, diffuse type of cancer that is insidious and is typically associated with a poor prognosis when diagnosed in the later stages. It appears that Peter’s cancer was “luck of the draw”. He is relatively young, fit and lives a healthy lifestyle.

He was unable to follow a typical regime of the chemotherapy-surgery-chemotherapy “sandwich” to determine the effectiveness of treatment due to the nature of his cancer symptoms. These symptoms warranted urgent removal of the bulk of his stomach. During this surgery, surgeons located and removed numerous metastatic tumours.

Peter has commenced chemotherapy in the hope that this “mops up” any errant cancer cells but it is not a guarantee. This type of cancer does not behave like others. It is slow and insidious making it difficult to detect and it often cannot be found even with a PET scan due to its formation pattern.

Peter is determined to be here for the long haul. We need him here for the long haul. As a family, Peter’s health has become our sole focus.

We have been asked by people how they can help. We are incredibly private people and have had difficulty accepting any type of help. But after a number of treatment cycles, we now realise we cannot do this alone. We greatly appreciate the emotional support and offers of practical support. Any financial assistance we receive will go towards paying for in home support such as a cleaner/yard maintenance, out of pocket medical expenses, travel expenses to enable our children to participate in Camp Quality activities (meeting other children who have a family member affected by cancer) and creating memories with our family. We would love to be able to take a few trips away to “just be”, rather than a family who is constantly reminded and focused on cancer and treatments. We are hopeful for the future but in the event of loss, these memories will last our children a lifetime.

We greatly appreciate your support in any and all forms.