WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

Hi I’m Grant, “aka” Poppy Ruts and Billy. I am 57 years old and in October 2020 was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal Biliary cancer.

I am an extremely lucky man married to my beautiful wife Debra, have 5 wonderful children, 4 beautiful granddaughters and one grandson in the making.

I have an amazing support system of family and friends which helps me every day to continue to fight hard against the odds and battle my cancer.

After diagnosis of Bowel cancer mid October 2020 life as we knew it was never to be the same again.

An operation late in that month and whilst on the table the surgeon found out it was way worse than first thought. The cancer had actually started in my gallbladder and I went from Bowel cancer, chop it out, maybe have some treatment after and everything should be OK to stage 4 terminal Biliary cancer, no known fix, no long term solution and to comprehend you have just been told you have up to 6-9 months to live.

This was my new normal. The enormity of how my life had changed in a heartbeat and the impact to my beautiful wife, children, grandchildren, friends and work was devastating and sinking in slowly.

Go and enjoy your life they said. WTF does that mean. I still don’t know how to process that. How do you even do that in COVID times, lock downs and family / friends spread across Australia.

Recovery till mid December then Chemotherapy till late April 2021 there was not a lot of time to process what had happened nor did I have the energy. After going about 7 rounds, 3 week cycles, over 21 weeks in the ring with “Mike Tyson” the chemo had belted the hell out of me, screwed with my body but on the positive looked like it had helped put Mike back in his corner for a while and I became known as stable.

I had the docs a bit confused on how well I was and beating the odds.

After 610 days of stable, bloods and scans showing ok and living my life as best we could, “Mike” decided to pop his head up again around mid November 2022. Bloods and scans showed enough to be concerned about and we made a decision to do something and get back in the ring.

This time Chemo + add some Immunotherapy for good measure over 9 weeks, 3 cycles, work in progress. I must say early on “Mike” has the points and punching pretty hard but I am slowly wearing him down again.