By Your Side

by Jason Carrasco

  Her parents looked wrung out, especially Gloria, who had barely left Cass’s side the entire time. She had on her customary brave face and was staying very positive, but I could tell she was absolutely exhausted. Me being there allowed Dad to take Joe downstairs for a coffee while Gloria made a quick visit to her son’s house to shower and grab a few things. Joe was able to speak from the heart to Dad, talking about how desperate Cass’s situation was and how they had been to hell and back. He said, ‘I don’t know how much longer we have with her.’ Tears were shed.

  Meanwhile, in our time alone, Cass and I chatted about the future. She said, ‘I just want to go to uni and chill with you.’ I assured her that, together, we would make it happen.

  Dad said afterwards Joe’s spirits had visibly lifted as they came back to the room and could hear us laughing together from down the corridor. On the way home, Dad and I talked about how strong both Cass and her parents were. I told him you could see where Cass’s resilience came from when you looked at Gloria especially. ‘Man, she is such an incredible role model. If there was ever someone who deserved the title Mother of the Year, it’s her.’

  The next day I texted Cass to see how she was. She messaged back, HEYA VALENTINE, JUST WAITING TO GET DISCHARGED NOW.

  I went to visit her at home the day after and she showed me the film of her brain pre- and post-operation scans. You could see the chunk of brain they’d had to take out when they removed the tumour. She said that although it wasn’t exactly something you wanted to have happen to you, the brain would adapt and other parts of it would get to work to compensate for the missing section.

  But there did prove to be some side effects, particularly to her hearing and eyesight. In the weeks that followed Cass went to hearing and eye specialists, along to her oncology, neurosurgery and physiotherapy appointments, to try to figure out how to deal with the problems she was having and to find out how likely it was she would get those functions fully back. No-one knew for sure. It was just a waiting game, like the rest of her life.

  In the meantime, she bore it all with her trademark Cass stoicism. She sent me a photo showing her entire inner forearm black with bruises from the struggle to find good veins for the needles she was having. I knew how that felt and texted her, I’LL KISS IT BETTER NEXT TIME I SEE YOU :D, REVERSAL!

  But unlike me when I’d been going through treatment, Cass didn’t waste time feeling sorry for herself. She had been giving me lots of encouragement about the big speech and on February 21, the day before the event, she texted, HEY DUDE, HOW IS YOUR SPEECH PRACTISING GOING? HAS THE MIRROR HAD ENOUGH YET? :D

  I was now working two days a week and somehow the time seemed to slip away. I had to ’fess up. I ACTUALLY HAVEN’T HAD THE CHANCE TO PRACTISE.

  She messaged back, with one of her cheeky upside-down smiles, I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR (: BUT I’M SURE YOU DON’T NEED TO PRACTISE BECAUSE YOU’RE GOOD AT EVERYTHING ALREADY :D

  On the morning of the 22nd, I flew to Melbourne with Sony Foundation CEO, Sophie Ryan, and Communications Manager, Ali Best. The function was being held in the Crown Casino complex but the idea was to raise money, not spend it, so we stayed in much more modest and inexpensive serviced apartments nearby.

  At 6.30 pm we entered the Crown’s Palladium room. Just walking in was enough to make my heart start racing. The room was huge and stunningly decorated. It’s the venue where the Logie Awards, Brownlow Medal announcement and other huge events are held and it’s really special. Six hundred guests had paid $330 a head to come (some had paid even more for the chance to do a meet-and-greet with the evening’s star speaker) and they had dressed up for the occasion. I was wearing an outfit Mel had styled for me: a blue shirt with a matching tie, nice black pants and snappy evening shoes.

  Soph, Ali and I sat together; all the other guests were at 10-seater tables and the room was buzzing. There would be a three-course dinner and music from former Australian Idol contestant Anthony Callea, but of course the main attraction was the man who was known as one of the finest football players of his generation. The audience was there to hear all about his incredible career, including winning the UEFA Champions League with Juventus and the World Cup for Italy, and being selected by Pele as one of the all-time greats of the sport. A lot of the crowd might not have known where the money raised was going to; that’s where I came in.

  All too soon, the first course was done with and it was time for me to get up and make my way to the stage. The MC, Fox Sports presenter Michael Zappone, introduced me. I got to the podium okay, but when I looked out through the blinding lights to all those hundreds of faces I started shaking. Not only did I have to speak to everyone there, I was about to open up to them about something incredibly personal. My heart felt like it was going to burst out of my chest. I stalled for a moment, adjusting the position of the microphone, then falteringly began. I managed to get out, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Alessandro, thank you for having me here tonight as your guest speaker,’ before grinding to a halt.

  My voice just wouldn’t work, but then images of Cass flashed through my mind. I saw her holding my hand as I got needles, helping me laugh through the pain. I remembered how it would feel when I was in hospital, scared and angry, and she would come in, her peaceful aura calming me and her infectious smile lifting me up. I had to do this for her. I felt a tear come to my eye, but it was a tear of happiness. I took a deep breath and spoke from the heart.

  I told the audience about my history of diagnosis and treatment and about how afraid I had been. Then I told them about how Cass had helped me get through it all and had changed my view of the world. I told them about what I called the cruel irony of Cass’s relapse just as I was getting better. I said:

  ‘Today I stand here for both of us. Ladies and gentlemen, I see myself having two choices: I can look at my adversity and accept conditions as they exist, or I can accept the responsibility for changing them. I too have a dream – that cancer will no longer have the social stigma of death, suffering and pain. I dream that names like Cassandra Nascimento will live on, and her legacy of courage, survival and strength will last forever. I dream that cancer will be no longer feared, and with research, awareness and action it will be a disease that is controlled like the common cold.

  ‘This is my goal – to make cancer just a word, not a sentence. Adversity is like the clouds; they are temporary and will move on. I keep my eyes firmly on the stars because I know they will always be there. As people, we don’t get to choose how we are going to die, or when. We can only decide how we are going to live right now. Every day is a new chance to choose. Choose to be positive. Choose to embrace life with passion. Choose to never give up. Choose to be alive.’

  As I wrapped up, I was so relieved that I’d done Cass justice and spoken clearly and passionately about the things we believed in that it took me a minute to realise that the audience was giving me a standing ovation. When I walked off the stage and headed back to my table, people were lining my path. Ladies were wiping away tears and men were patting me on the shoulder and shaking my hand as I passed. It was an amazing response and it didn’t stop there. People came up to me to ask about Cass and find out how else they could support the cause.

  The response was so overwhelming, I stepped outside to call Cass and share it with her. I told her I’d just given the speech and described how it had gone: ‘The response was unbelievable. They all want to meet you!’

  ‘That sounds awesome,’ she said, ‘I wish I could be there. But I knew you were going to be great, Jase. I believe in you, I knew you could do it.’

  I could hear in her voice she really meant it. It wasn’t just one of those things friends say to each other; she truly did have complete faith in me. I’m not sure I’d ever fully realised what that meant before. What an incredible gift.

  Going back inside and meeting the legendary man of the evening himself was a fantastic experience. Del Piero began by joking with me about my mangled Italian at the end of my speech
. I showed him how it was written on my notes and he took out a pen and corrected it, then wrote a message urging me to keep up the great work and to stay strong for Cass. I asked him what it was like to win the World Cup and he said, ‘Fantastico!’ He was a really lovely guy.

  But as wonderful as it was to have met Del Piero and as awesome as I felt about having spread the word about You Can’s work, what hit home to me the deepest about that night was what Cass had said to me and the genuine feeling behind her words.

  Two days later she started a new kind of treatment: oncothermia. This was another ray of hope; however, this time there was solid science behind it. The name just means heat treatment and it has been used with success since 1989 in Europe, although the research is still being done to understand the process.

  An associate professor from the University of New South Wales with the memorable name of Michael Jackson, an expert in oncology radiation, was the consulting doctor at an oncothermia clinic that had opened in the Prince of Wales Private Hospital three months earlier. He explained that heating cancer cells makes them more sensitive to chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Usually it was used in combination with those treatments, but it could sometimes also be applied in cases like Cass’s, when the cancer kept coming back despite those other treatments.

  Oncothermia is a completely different experience to having radiation or a chemo drip. The patient just lies on a water bed that is heated to 30°C. A kind of paddle is attached to the part of the body where the cancer is, in Cass’s case the head, and it generates heat and an electromagnetic field to weaken the cancer cells.

  Cass was really positive about starting the treatment and even more positive once it got underway. She found that, as promised, it had none of the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy and none of the discomfort of radiation. Talking about it in an interview with the local paper, which was following her progress, Cass said she felt better than she had in years. In the same interview Gloria said, ‘While we don’t know for sure that it’s going to work, at least we’ve got the chance to try something different.’

  Cass was still experiencing some residual hearing and sight problems, and her doctors had said she should not drive until they had fully passed. Gloria continued to be her full-time carer, taking her everywhere she needed to go, including the trips to Sydney and back three times a week for the oncothermia. I went with them whenever I could to make the hours of travel less boring. Cass and I would chat and make silly jokes and tease each other. Cass said me being there really helped her, and Gloria commented at one point it was the most she’d seen Cass laugh in years.

  Cass would also start a new chemo regime soon after, but this time it was delivered via tablets, not a drip, and was a cycle of 21 days on, 21 days off. Even though she was going through treatment, she was always thinking about other people and looking for any opportunity to help them. In early March I got a call from one of my close friends who said, ‘Jason, I think I’m in trouble. I’ve had this really bad back pain, like the kind you said you had before you were diagnosed, and one of my balls is swollen. What do I do?’

  I told him get to the doctor ASAP. I made a point of saying that because of his age it was highly unlikely it would be cancer, but he needed to get checked out just in case. Thank heavens he took my advice – against all odds it was testicular cancer. But because he had known the warning signs and followed them up, his was found very early. He had surgery to remove a testicle, with four cycles of chemo as a follow-up preventative. Luckily, the tumour hadn’t spread and he would need no further treatment beyond that.

  I’d have loved that to have happened for me, but the next best thing was to have been able to give someone else the benefit of my experience and save them having to go through the worst of it. By being brave enough to share personal experiences in detail, you can literally save lives. Knowing I’d helped someone in that way was a pretty special feeling.

  My friend started on chemo and I told Cass that he was doing relatively well but still reeling from the diagnosis, just like most other people did. Her first instinct was to help. ‘I have to meet this boy,’ she said.

  He didn’t live all that far away, but with no car of my own I couldn’t drive us there so we’d have to wait for one of our parents to be available to take us. But Cass was impatient. Gloria would have hidden the keys to her daughter’s car if she’d had any idea what was afoot.

  One day when Joe was at work, Cass waited until Gloria went out to do some grocery shopping and then got behind the wheel for the first time in months and drove the 15 minutes to my place. I told her, ‘What are you doing, you know what the doctors said!’

  She insisted she felt absolutely fine and had had no problems on the way over. It was a further 15 minutes to my friend’s house. I offered to drive us in her car but she refused: ‘We have a higher chance of crashing if you take the wheel with two fully functional eyes!’

  I guess neither of us thought about the fact that if there had been an accident Cass wouldn’t have been covered by insurance, since she was driving against medical advice. I was just really touched by her kindness and compassion.

  We made it to my friend’s place with no issues. His mum let us in and told us he was in his room. He was thinner than I had ever seen him and struggling to cope with what was happening. The experience of being in an adult hospital had left him feeling isolated and alienated – a familiar story. He had already lost his hair to the chemo and was wearing a beanie that he kept on pretty much all the time because he was so uncertain about how people would react if he took it off. Cass said, ‘Hey, my hair tries to grow back but I shave it off because I’m a proud baldie, aren’t I, Jase?’

  The more Cass talked to him about what she’d been through, the more he relaxed. She gave him tips and tricks to help him get through the experience and I added ones of my own. But it was Cass who really made an impact. As she spoke to him, his face began to light up with hope. I could see him starting to believe that maybe this wasn’t a curse or a life-wrecking setback after all, maybe it was an opportunity to test the depths of your inner strength and resilience; something you could emerge from as the best version of yourself.

  Before we departed, Cass insisted on taking a photo of his bald head next to hers, and reassured him that everything would be alright and that she was always available for a chat if he wanted to clear his mind. It was amazing to think that it had been only six months ago when she and I went through the same thing; we’d been through so much since then and become so close that, in some ways, it felt like years had passed. We left my friend with a smile on his face. It was the Cass Effect – she spread optimism and happiness wherever she went.

  The one thing Cass couldn’t prepare me for, having not had the chance to really experience it for herself, was a return to normality. Or rather, the beginning of a new normality: life after cancer. It was time to ease myself back into the swing of things, return to work part-time, resume uni and see if I could make my footballing comeback.

  Football was the one I thought would be easiest. I was still a long way from my physical best but I was confident that, gradually, through regular training, I’d build back up to that. What I didn’t anticipate was what it would be like when everyone seemed to know I’d had cancer: the club committee, the players on other teams, the canteen helpers, the people who came to watch weekend games, everyone. Even if they didn’t address it directly, I knew they knew because they acted differently around me.

  There were broad patterns across different age groups. People around my age did everything they could to avoid the topic of cancer or any other subject that might accidentally lead to it, to the point where a lot of them with whom I might previously have had run-of-the-mill social conversations just stopped talking to me entirely. It was as if they were so afraid of the idea of cancer that they were superstitious about the word being said aloud.

  People my parents’ age tended to bring it up but in a vague and awkward way, saying to me, ‘
You good?’ with their thumbs up. I got the feeling they didn’t really want me to answer beyond giving them a reassuring nod or a return thumbs-up. That was okay, since I didn’t want to talk about it with them anyway.

  Older people as a group did the strangest thing of all. Even the ones who had known me most of my life started talking to me slowly, as if I’d acquired a hearing problem or a brain injury, not cancer. ‘Hello … Jason … you … look … very … well.’ You could watch grass grow in the time it took for them to finish a sentence.

  Then there were the people of all ages who made assumptions (‘He can’t drink alcohol now, so don’t offer him any’) or drew weird conclusions, coming up with bizarre statements they made either to my face (‘So-and-so is only friends with you because they feel sorry for you’) or behind my back (‘He’s turned awkward because of his cancer’).

  It was so odd. When I had been really struggling with the diagnosis and treatment, all I’d wanted was to step back into the life I’d had before. I’d thought the hard part of doing that would be my internal struggles: the effort not to be paralysed with fear about the possibility of cancer recurring, and the seeming impossibility of ever feeling carefree in the way most of my mates did. It had simply never occurred to me that cancer would leave a permanent scar on me in the eyes of acquaintances.

  But what happened when I returned to work left me in no doubt that for some people I would forever have ‘diseased’ and ‘weak’ in neon letters above my head.

  As an employer, the organisation I had worked for had been exemplary. Despite the fact that I had barely started there before I got sick the company was incredibly supportive, and so were the workmates who had been just getting to know me. My managers and the HR department made sure I knew I could take all the leave I needed and the traineeship position would be there waiting for me whenever I was well enough to return to it. The staff in the section I was in even went so far as to gather donations for me then present me with a cheque to use towards a holiday when I was finished with my treatment. It was very touching.