'I had weeks to live': How cancer survivor Robert Frank turned his life around

It was while lifting a pregnant woman into an ambulance in 2015 that Frank hurt the back of his groin. At first he dismissed it as a hernia but doctors discovered it was a node inflammation. “That then led to my cancer diagnosis. I had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

“When I was diagnosed I thought ‘Holy moly, my whole world is flying down’.  I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I’ve exercised throughout my life. I thought, ‘why, why did this happen?’”

Robert’s lymphoma was aggressive and difficult to treat and he had to undergo eight rounds of chemotherapy.

“After about two rounds, the aggressiveness of the treatment really started to knock me around. I became more inclined to want to stay in bed,” he said.

“Some days when I was sick, I would only be able to walk from one end of the caravan to the other.”

It was on the day of his wife Jaclyn’s graduation for her masters degree that Robert re-evaluated his life.

His doctor told Robert that if he traveled to watch Jaclyn graduate in December he shouldn’t expect to live past January.

“I realised on the day of her graduating what was important in life. It’s not important if I live for another 100 years or another three weeks. Its family, and its love that’s the most important thing that goes on in this world.”

Then on December 28, one day after Robert was discharged from the hospital after getting chemo, he collapsed in the back of his caravan. Luckily, Jaclyn was there to help him.

He was rushed to  hospital for a PET scan, which to his relief showed no sign of cancer. The treatment had worked, it was simply the side effects of chemotherapy that made him feel so unwell.

After the cancer was cleared, Robert started looking around for services got put on to the Cancer Council’s Healthy Living after Cancer program – a free telephone-based health coaching program.

“Liz Hing was my mentor for 12 months. Her interactions and involvements were so important to me. There were days I just talked to her and cry.

“The exercises explained through the program helped, but it was particularly the healthy diet advice.

“It’s so easy to lapse into different alternatives for eating. So the program kept me on a good track. I am very susceptible to dehydration, so now I’m more conscious of how much water I need to drink a day.”

“Sometimes you just need someone to come along and drag you by the hand say, ‘here you go, do it.’ Liz and the Healthy Living after Cancer program did that for me.”

Robert said after two years, he and his wife are finally getting to that ‘new normal’ after-cancer phase.

“We’re not terrified of relapses or anything. I’ve been cleared for two and half years. I was fortunate to come out of it very strong.”

“The Healthy Living after Cancer program is brilliant. To me, it was one of the most important aspects to me and my wife. We’re often travelling and distance is our friend and our enemy. There weren’t a lot of services that we could use because we weren’t local enough.”

Healthy Living after Cancer is part of a national research project, looking at how telephone-based healthy lifestyle support can improve wellbeing after cancer treatment.

Daffodil Day is the Cancer Councils’ annual fundraising day to raise money for cancer research.

This Daffodil Day on August 24 Cancer Council is hoping to raise over $4 million across Australia to go towards supporting cancer research like the Healthy Living after Cancer project.

www.daffodilday.com.au