I was first diagnosed with uterine and cervical cancer. And that came after I had been going to the doctor for more than six months complaining of vaginal thrush. He kept giving me creams and suppositories. It was while he was away and a locum was attending his offices that I got to see a conscientious doctor. He wanted to do an examination and after opening up my vagina with an instrument and looking into my uterus, he said "i don't like the look of it". He took samples and said they would be sent off for testing and then told me I would be called when the results were back.
The test results came back when my usual GP was back and he wanted to have me in hospital within the next two days for a full hysterectomy. "Spare organ" he claimed "you don't need it. We can whip it out" or something like that. His urgency came after the many months that he had fobbed me off. And as it turned out later he had failed to diagnose my high blood sugars in that time too. Anyway, my intuition was on red alert and I told him I had to think about it and maybe get a second opinion. He told me I didn't have time but I insisted. He gave me a referral and I left. In the car park outside his office I opened up the envelop and he had given the next doctor the note that I had uterine cancer and needed an operation and then gave his name and number with the words "call me" below. I knew in Australia our doctors do influence one another. And to get a real second opinion I needed to go to the second doctor cold, without any referral to influence them, so I tore it up and put it in the garbage bin.
I had two other reasons that influenced me for leaving town and taking a long journey to get a second opinion. One was a story that my father often told his mates when I was a child. An army friend of his had been diagnosed with lung cancer and given some months to live. The man decided to fulfill his dream and go hunting in Alaska. He sold up everything he had,cashed up and left. Then after a year or more of hunting and money running out he came back to Australia. And when he went to see his doctor and had some further tests done they found no cancer. The other reason was that there were people in Cairns that I felt were somehow bad influences but I had no idea that they had anything to do with my cancer.
I decided to drive to Sydney, which is about 2,600 Kms south of Cairns. I found a hitchhiker that a friend had met to help me drive my car to Sydney. This ended up taking a lot of time, but it was a boon, which I hadn't realized at the time. Not far out of Cairns he had overtaken a train of cars and trucks and only got back into the correct lane with literally inches to spare. I freaked. I told him we would travel on the inland roads, which had little traffic. He told me that was fine because he was about seeing as much of Australia as he could. He was after all hitch-hiking his way around Australia. We zigzagged down through Queensland and New South Wales, joking at times that we would visit Uluru on our way to Sydney. Uluru is a big rock at the very center of Australia.
Now on the journey down the stress I had been under vanished. We had also opted to do daily bush walks for an hour or two and I thought perhaps the bush walks had helped clear the stress. There were many other symptoms too, which I had not attributed to any cancer. I had for instance a cough, which waned considerably but more importantly I was bringing up a reddish brown phlegm. This vanished by the time we got to Brisbane, some four weeks later. And I must say here I was a smoker and all throughout the trip I was still smoking a packet of cigarettes a day.
I also noticed that the heavy chemical smell that was coming from my vagina was only faint. And certainly the thrush was gone. Other symptoms were bloating I had felt, especially at night. It was gone. And by the time we were approaching Sydney, another week and a half later there were other symptoms too that waned. I had some pain and tension in my abdomen from time to time, particular in the groin, it was now not bothering me so much. So while the journey ended up much longer than I had planned, it was to prove a big advantage for me in the end..
