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https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/03/brainstorm-richard-scolyer-book-interview-brain-cancer>
"Richard Scolyer was fully engaged in the business of living when he suddenly
received a death sentence. A person more alive would be hard to find. As an
endurance athlete competing across the globe, he was in peak physical
condition. As one of the world’s leading pathologists on melanoma whose
pioneering research has saved thousands of lives, he was in demand. At 56, Prof
Richard Scolyer was flying along. His life, he says, was “rich”. And then, on
the morning of 20 May 2023, he found himself losing consciousness and
convulsing on the floor in a hotel room in Poland, panicking and scared.
After this grand mal seizure, he went for an MRI scan at University hospital in
Krakow. It found a mass in his temporal lobe. Scolyer knew immediately it had
delivered very bad news.
Having diagnosed other people with cancer many times, he knew exactly what the
finding could mean. Most likely brain cancer. He knew the outcome for a
high-grade glioma was “shockingly bad”. That a brain tumour is incurable, and
he would have an “horrific last few months”. He descended into black despair;
devastated, anxious, terrified. He cried and cried, weeping when he rang his
children.
A biopsy operation performed in Sydney 12 days later would confirm the “worst
of the worst”. It was an aggressive grade 4 IDH-wildtype glioblastoma – a
terminal diagnosis.
“I didn’t want to die. I loved my life,” writes this year’s co-Australian of
the Year in his new memoir Brainstorm. Only three weeks before the seizure he
had represented Australia at the World Triathlon Multisport Championships in
Ibiza. Now the certainties had been ripped away. Now his life was measured in
months and weeks. Since that Saturday morning in Krakow he has been in
unchartered waters.
Scolyer is remarkably optimistic for a man who did not expect to be alive when
his book came out last month. But he is. “And kicking.” If somewhat cautiously.
When you are attempting to revolutionise brain cancer treatment with a one-man
clinical trial you can’t take anything for granted."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
