Andrew Sloan’s story

Oligodendroglioma, diagnosed February 2018

“Mr Sloan, we have found a mass.”

On hearing these words my life was forever changed. It was the 19th February 2018 and I was a fit and healthy 38 year old. My tumour was discovered on an MRI scan following a mountain bike crash.

This led to weeks in hospital following a craniotomy to debulk tumour cells and figure out what exactly was going on in my head. The results confirmed that I had brain cancer (an oligodendroglioma).

The doctor asked if we wanted to know how much time I had to live. This was not something we wanted to know. I did not want to know stats until I became one! I underwent intensive treatment of radiation and chemotherapy, all given at the same time. The oncologists decided to hit me hard with treatment as they believed I was young and healthy and my body could handle the onslaught as to what was to come.

Looking back on surgery and treatment, it is all a haze. The time and emotions were all in a warp of week to week ups and downs. I was not in any way capable of revisiting who I once was. I continued and completed treatments. I had more follow up chemo and then the ‘how to’ of where life was taking me.

I was told to prioritise my life in terms of what was important to me along with not being able to run, bike, raise my heart rate and even had to consider the possibility of giving up work. In my surgeon’s words “Mr Sloan you need to forget about the life you had”.

Looking back I can see the toll the medications and treatments took on my body… not to mention my wife, our marriage and relationship with our children. I wasn’t quite the husband/Dad they knew anymore. The treatments have given me time, of which is still an unknown factor in a brain cancer journey. The biology of the brain is a job left for the medical professionals.

I see life and the journey I am on as one that is very much invisible to many around me. I have come out the other side of treatments, physically looking as many other men in their 40s may do. The unseen parts are all inside my brain and in my emotions. If I was moving about the place with a limb in a cast or bearing a large graze it would be visibly obvious something is wrong. I often feel like I am the bravest face on the most scared and challenged person in a room.

This journey is one heck of a ride and a bloody hard one at that. I have so much to live for with three little boys and a wonderful wife who are my everything. I am not done with family time and being a Dad. I still have so much to teach my children and lots of love to give them. I hope to see our children finish school, I hope to see them start their first job, I hope to meet their first girlfriends, to see them travel, I hope to see them get married and I hope I get to meet my grandchildren one day. I know within my heart this is asking for a lot from someone with a terminal illness, however hope is all I can hold onto.

Andrew Sloan
Lake Hawea NZ
May 2022