Collapse exposed tumour

It was September 29 last year and Mr Payne, 35, a machine operator with Visyboard, remembers little except for feeling sick while on his hands and knees in the backyard of his Wodonga home.

He awoke in the lounge room with his wife Mel at his side and paramedics attempting to explain his collapse.

Within 72 hours, Mr Payne had been flown from Albury to St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, where a lesion on his brain was diagnosed as a tumour.

“The bottom of your world drops out,” he said.

“You don’t know what to think. You hope for the best, but you think what if?”

Surgeons told Mr Payne his tumour measured six centimetres and he had three options — to undergo a massive dose of chemotherapy and hope that reduced the tumour’s size; to have surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible with a follow-up dose of radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy; or do nothing and get his affairs in order.

“I broke at that stage and said ‘give me the paperwork for the surgery’. I had three children, a wife and family and I was not prepared to leave them,” he said.

Mr Payne said at such a difficult time, support from family and friends offered the most critical element for recovery; they were nearby and able to be with him throughout his time in Melbourne.

“I was fortunate. I had my family down there but there are those who don’t have families,” he said.

“Family is the biggest part of healing. You can have all the medicine in the world but without that support, it’s nothing.

“And it’s not the same if you are talking to them on the phone.”

Mr Payne has been able to undergo six weeks of radiotherapy and other treatment at Wodonga but he has returned to Melbourne every two months in the past 11 months for follow-up appointments with his doctors there.

Mr Payne will join hundreds of other Border residents at next Sunday’s rally on the Lincoln Causeway to support the Border regional cancer centre.