remission

Andrew is a funny young bloke who likes to laugh. He’s both gentle and a gentleman. We meet when Andrew, Becca, Julie and I put the SKIPS program together in 2000 and he’s a health psychology student on placement.

How does health psychology differ from other psychologies, I ask. It’s the psychology of health, he says. He should know: he’s a registered psychologist and has a doctorate in his branch of it.

Late in the morning we meet for lunch, Andrew and Julie and me. Julie supervises Andrew’s placement at EACH all those years ago. He has a wife, Celia, then and now, and Andrew and Celia have two children aged three and a half and eight months.


There’s no good time to get a life-threatening cancer, but for a young father with a pregnant wife, it could hardly be worse. And no one ever deserved cancer less. The cancer is so rare and has such a ghastly polysyllabic name that I can’t remember it or what body part it affects. It’s an older person’s cancer, so as a thirty-something, Andrew has a good chance of beating it. So far he has: after six months of chemo he has colour in his cheeks and hair. He’s in remission.

I ask him if, like Lance Armstrong, he calls himself a cancer survivor. No, he says. His oncologist tells him that it’s not a matter of if the cancer returns, but when. Cheery folk, oncologists. He might stay in remission long enough to die of old age.

We don’t dwell too much on the cancer, but talk of children and work. We have only an hour before Julie must go to a meeting. We eat, Julie leaves, and Andrew wants to keep talking, about sport mostly. We agree that we must get to a Carlton game together this year. We're both diehards and will enjoy each other’s company.

I’m conscious that my car has overstayed its legal welcome at the side of the highway and cut things short. I shouldn't. If Andrew wants my time, he should have it. As I open the door and get in I feel a bit ashamed.

   

Rock on.