ON their 52nd wedding anniversary on Monday, from the seaside suburb where they spent the first two years of marriage, Bryce and Barbara Gaudry talked about love, mortality, pancreatic cancer and cannabis oil.
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The former Newcastle MP and former Newcastle City councillor believe the community has the right to know cannabis oil helps some people like Mr Gaudry deal with the devastating consequences of pancreatic cancer and its treatment.
But they distanced themselves from Newcastle cannabis oil campaigner and deregistered doctor Andrew Katelaris, who responded to recent sanctions by the state’s health watchdog by saying they were “irrelevant to my existence”.
Mr Gaudry said a media report on Monday confirming his use of cannabis oil was not to promote Newcastle’s Ubuntu Centre or so that he could be “an advocate for Andrew Katelaris”.
It was to highlight the need for research into the deadly pancreatic cancer, and the lack of progress over the past 30 years in increasing the survival rate or developing effective treatments for dealing with its symptoms.
“My doctor said I have a 3 per cent chance of surviving the cancer. I use every possible pathway that I can to at least have a chance, and so I’ve used cannabis oil. I’m not here as an advocate for anybody, but I am here arguing cannabis oil helped me when traditional medicines didn’t,” Mr Gaudry said.
He had major surgery in April and counted himself as “one of the lucky ones, if you can call it lucky”, because 30 per cent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer died within two months.
Seven months of chemotherapy followed. Barbara Gaudry described the “incredible distress” of caring for her desperately ill husband who was in constant pain and “projectile vomiting bile really consistently”.
He had major surgery in April and counted himself as “one of the lucky ones, if you can call it lucky”, because 30 per cent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer died within two months.
Seven months of chemotherapy followed. Barbara Gaudry described the “incredible distress” of caring for her desperately ill husband who was in constant pain and “projectile vomiting bile”.
“They warn of the need for people to try to keep on weight but he was constantly vomiting. He lost 19 kilograms. He had no appetite for food. It was incredibly distressing nursing him, seeing him in the state he was in,” Mrs Gaudry said.
Mr Gaudry’s vomiting, nausea and pain decreased three days after first taking cannabis oil.
”It would be wonderful if cannabis oil was available so that you knew exactly what you were getting, and so you could have the confidence of going to your doctor and obtaining it for symptom relief,” Mrs Gaudry said.
She was concerned that the issue of cannabis oil was not lost in the “circus around Katelaris”.
“It’s given Bryce a quality of life that has been so important to us. What was available to help him didn’t work,” she said.
