My Liver, My Life

I have liver cancer. I intend to tell you about it. The day I found out, the first thing I did was go to the books folder on my computer desk top. Not to buy one but to write another one. I started a folder called: My Liver, My Life.

And I started a daily diary on what was happening to me and what I was thinking. I also thought that by immersing myself in a project, by being brutally honest about it through my radio program on 3AW, through Twitter (@HumanHeadline) and through this hinch.net website, I might actually add something to several health debates.

The main one being about the appalling lack of organ donors in Australia. The fact that only 11 people per million population in this country donate organs compare to 34 in Spain and 24 in the United States. It’s a combination of ignorance, fear and laziness. Plus a sense of ‘it won’t happen to me’.

I also plan to continue the campaign against alcohol abuse. I started it with my last book I Beat the Booze And  You Can Too.

(My own reckless, unthinking, alcohol abuse over five decades gave me cirrhosis of the liver. That didn’t cause the cancer but it provided a fertile ground for it and diminished my chances of survival if I had 30% of that cancerous organ removed.)

A colleague has referred to my current situation as a ‘medical fatwah’. I wouldn’t put it in those catastrophic terms. I have described it as ‘all part of life’s rich tapestry’.

In the weeks, months and (I hope) years ahead that I will be on this journey into the unknown I hope some of you will come some of the way with me.