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BLOG #1 - A BATTLE ON TWO FRONTS
Battling cancer is both difficult and traumatic but it gets worse if the government is willfully uncooperative.
HOW IT STARTED - 4th JULY 2008
It was quite a shock to be told less than a week after being declared in remission from prostate cancer that there was a cancerous tumour embedded in my vocal cords. My immediate reaction had me reluctantly accepting the loss of my reproductive function but being deprived of my basic method of communication was quite something else.
My doctor quickly assured me, the two problems were quite unrelated. In my late sixties I could expect prostate cancer but not squamous cell cancer of the larynx.
This was almost always a disease associated with tobacco smoking. I do not smoke.
A quick review of my medical life had my quite exceptional GP suggesting that my vocal cords may well be under threat because of something that had happened more than fifty years ago.
In my late teens I had been ordered by an RAAF doctor to attend the rooms of Dr, John Conquest in Collins Street in Melbourne for treatment for my somewhat unsightly acne. I was just seventeen years old.
The well resourced and luxurious Collins Street rooms of Dr Conquest used a very expensive machine to apply Superficial X-Ray Therapy (SXT) as an exclusive therapy for the treatment of pimples.
On reflection a cake of soap may have achieved more without any side effects. I met my first wife in the radiologists waiting room. Cancer killed her well short of her seventieth birthday.
When first diagnosed with Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) over fifteen years ago, which is a common form of skin cancer, I was mildly surprised. I have never been an "outdoor" type of person and can not remember ever being seriously sunburned in my life.
But then doctors started reacting positively to my suspicion that the SXT might have caused my skin cancer problems. It was another two years however before the Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Group (MRCG) finally accepted that the SXT was probably the cause of my cancer.
MRCG is now a section of the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) but for a long time it was a group unto itself. The group remains exclusive. Essentially the group exists to administer an act of parliament, which provides rehabilitation and compensation for any person who has suffered a specific injury or illness as the result of military service.
This is quite different from DVA who virtually cover anybody for anything if they have been in a declared war zone. I had not.
So in 1995 I was finally accepted by MRCG as a person who had been injured or damaged through no fault of their own, but in consequence of being a member of Australian Defence Forces. This meant very little in real terms however.
Virtually only conditional travel expenses now became available in excess of the treatment costs that would normally be available from Medicare. In my case a round trip to my GP is 42kms. The MRCG only pay travel over 50kms at 46c/km. This is considerably less than the cost allowed by the Australian Taxation Office. It would be hard to run a lawn mower for that today.
I remember being elated however that my government had, at least in this case, accepted responsibility for the duty of care implied when a pimply faced country youth had joined the ranks of the RAAF.
Oh boy ... did I ever get that wrong.
What actually developed was a constant battle of attrition over liability and costs between the MRCG and me which continues to this present day. As recently as today - Friday 4th July 2008 - the recommendations of a specialist designated by an eminent professor of oncology have been rejected by MRCG.
In the next episode I will begin examining in detail just how well the MRCG has honoured their duty of care to this ex-serviceman. Later, I will suggest that the MRCG is under resourced and therefore grossly inefficient.
Finally I will explain how I now feel that I have no choice left but to engage the Surgeon General in the Federal Court on behalf of myself and the many others who are being made to feel guilty for following medical orders.
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