DR ALINA Stoita wants to save my life. So when she first met me she knocked me out and stuffed a camera down my throat. Talk about getting personal!
The camera toured my pathways, giving the doctor a good view of my stomach, liver and duodenum.
But the pancreas was what Dr Stoita was really looking for. She was looking for early signs of cancer.
My mother died of pancreatic cancer less than six months after being diagnosed. Her sister, my aunt, died the same way.
Pancreatic cancer creeps into the body and keeps itself hidden until it has a deadly hold.
Death can be painful and far too early.
Dr Stoita and her colleague, Dr David Williams, are tired of telling patients that sort of bad news.
So, in between shifts and after hours at St Vincents Hospital, Sydney, Dr Stoita and Dr Williams squeeze in people like me: people they are seeing in their own free time because they want to break the code that pancreatic cancer hides behind.
And I'm bloody pleased they care.
A simple endoscopy or a look at the pancreas via an ultrasound down the throat could help identify the beginnings of the cancer in people who are high risk.
I'm a risky candidate thanks to Mum and Aunty Yvonne on dying of the cancer. Others at risk are people with certain genetic mutations such as BRCA2 gene.
The key to saving lives is to try to find things early.
The doctors want people-at-risk to be screened and monitored on a regular basis - and to have funding for this.
If Dr Stoita can prove to the federal government that the simple procedure I underwent is worth giving to others like me, it could become standard procedure for high risk patients.
"Some people have a 40-50 per cent lifetime risk of pancreatic cancer and we are not offering them anything,'' Dr Stoita says.
She says doctors should be able to offer something similar to having mammograms and Pap smears to people with an increased risk.
I have been checked quite a few times now. But the first time was an experience.
I had never been knocked out before. I was talking to the people in the operating room and they said they were going to give me some sleeping juice and ... that's all I remember.
When I woke up in recovery, Dr Stoita cheerfully told me I had a cyst on my pancreas.
Hell no, is this the worst possible news?
No. Dr Stoita is cheerful. The cyst is tiny and benign and probably is nothing, she tells me.
She wants to see me in another year to see if anything has progressed in that time.
If she's happy to see me - and she's the expert - I'm happy to go along with her.
I've just received the sort of treatment money can't buy no matter what sort of private health fund you have.
But a change of heart from the federal government could see many other people benefit from this wonderful service.
