MY WIZARDS OF OZ

MY WIZARDS OF OZ

Thirteen years ago two illegal boat people saved my life.

Their families risked all in the late 1970’s to seek better lives away from Vietnam. Away from twenty years of cruelty and carnage, into which, my two wizard saviours were born.

I don’t pretend to know the horrors, the traumas, the sacrifices the Vietnamese endured, but I’ve read enough true life accounts of many who did escape to know it would not have been as easy as climbing aboard a cruise ship.

The Tampa Incident in 2001 was the catalyst for change. It spawned the ‘turn back the boats’ policy. ‘Stop the people smugglers’ screamed politicians. ‘Stop drownings at sea’ wrote the papers. ‘Stop overcrowded unsafe boats’ called our stretched Patrol Boat crews, tired of hauling drowned bodies from the sea. So went the catch phrases designed to instil invasion fear and garner support from voters.

In aluminium boats a few small groups island-hopped through the blockade. More were turned back. Too many spent cruel, mind sapping years in Australian prisons established on foreign land – legalise-speak for, ‘not on Australian soil’. Many became victims of ruthless weaponised ‘pirates’. It is unknown the numbers who left their homelands with hope in their hearts, only to disappear below the waves.

However, I am forever thankful that James and Boon’s parents made it to Australia. Found understanding, safety, love and friendship and settled down. They educated all their children to high standards. My two wizards became doctors – James became a General Practitioner, Boon an Urologist Surgeon.

James and Boon are my saviours. How our paths crossed is the mystery behind mateship.

A series of seemingly unrelated incidents over thirty years built my Yellow Brick Road.

Scarecrow, I’d known for years. In Mackay in the late 1970’s we sailed together. Scarecrow was my family doctor in Mackay and again, when we both ended up in Brisbane ten years later. He’d been telling me for years I was too fat – that one day I’d drop dead of a heart attack. We all had nick-names – Scarecrow was his – built like a whippet, light and agile he was the perfect foreward-hand. This was about the same time the families of my future-saviours, sailed south from Vietnam.

Tinman was a shambolic Italian speedster smashing into our hire car in Austria in 2009. My wife and I both suffered broken sternums. We rested in Salzburg for a week then travelled on in a new car, over the Alps and around the Italian lakes, Maggiore, Lugano, Como, Iseo and Garda. Leaving the motel one morning I bumped my head on a wall mounted TV shelf. I thought nothing of it until in Florence that evening my left eye turned blood red.

‘Hospital’, said a pharmacist opposite the Dom. I followed his pointing finger.

A beautiful female doctor was my Lion. She and an eye specialist, examined me, more concerned at my undiagnosed high blood pressure than my eye and prescribed two months medication to see me home. To my surprise the hospital and medication were free.

Once home, I rang Scarecrow’s surgery for an appointment.

‘Sorry, you can’t see Dr Scarecrow. He died from a heart attack four months ago.’

‘Oh.’ I was stunned. His warnings to me had rebounded on my old foreward-hand.

‘Dr James has taken over Scarecrow’s rooms – would you see him?’

James was special. He looked at my electronic file, zeroed in on years of my PSA test results and without looking at me, declared in less than two minutes that I had prostate cancer.

The Wicked Witch laughed. My new PAS score had risen three points in the seven months we’d been overseas. ‘Go see Dr Boon. He’s my special urologist friend.’ The boat people story tumbled out as he examined me further.

Scarecrow had known my PSA score was slowly rising but said, ‘It’s about normal for a man your age.’ It wasn’t. And it rarely is.

I had no symptoms. I had no clue. I phoned a few mates who’d received various treatments from radium slugs to removal. A few mates were experiencing ongoing issues and in others, diagnosed too late, their rapidly moving cancer had reached bones and other organs. To that moment I’d never realised more men in Australia die from prostate cancer than do women from breast cancer.

Why do men need a scare to be tested when a PSA blood test is free, quick and so important?

With James and Boon, speed was their mantra. The Wicked Witch hovered, watching.

The tests started quickly. Within a month I’d had my operation. In hospital overnight and discharged on Saturday morning by a relief doctor. No drugs, no warnings and no guidelines issued on what not to do. Unknowing I went back to my 70 year old ways, only to end up back in hospital in two days. Torn internal stitches bladder to urethra and leaking issues you don’t need to know about. Dr Boon would not reopen the wound, the catheter barely dribbled because my bladder was emptying into the operation void. I suffered torture for three weeks. I have never felt so low in my life. One visiting hour a dressing on my lower stomach gave way. Bloody urine hit the window. Relief was instant. Nurses panicked. I pushed them away and let it flow.

My recovery re-started that day. Dr Boon the Wizard was a constant visitor. Each day his smile widened and he bought a procession of medicos to see and touch my red shoes.

Resembling Dorothy when the tornado eventually ended, I also found myself back in my silent riverside unit. Barely able to walk more than the length of our short patio, I was frustrated and bored. One day I sat in front of my computer and started typing. Plot, arc, protagonist, antagonist and crisis, words to my first four books tumbled out. My brain roared with ideas, my heart leapt with joy at my survival.

Each day I grew stronger. Repeated PSA tests showed 0.01 and still do so after thirteen years. An almost negligible score and important it stay that way. Countless mates would welcome such an outcome, but none had seen the Wizards of Oz, James and Boon.

I have buried too many mates who never walked my Yellow Brick Road.

And my blessings all came from chance encounters.

In the 1939 movie, Dorothy didn’t know where the Yellow Brick Road was going, or that on the way she’d meet such wonderful characters, each with their own foibles, strengths and fears.

Chance encounters have driven my life forward, enriching it beyond measure and I am blessed such wonderful people as James and Boon keep finding ways to storm Australia’s defensive shores, and find their way by chance into my life.