His mother Jenny recalls one of the items was skydiving, — a death-defying feat perhaps, for her boy who sadly succumbed to a rare form of leukaemia in 2010.

Mrs Jensen knows there were times during his illness Ricky could have been well enough to have those adventures, if the right palliative care had been available.

Now the Gerogery woman is joining the Cancer Council NSW’s “Saving Life” campaign to get the state government to pledge more funding to needs like palliative care, in the hope it will improve life for other cancer sufferers and their families.

“People baulk at it (palliative care) and think it’s about death and they don’t want to hear about it, but really to a certain extent it’s about survival,” said Mrs Jensen, who is the Border Advocacy Network chairwoman for Cancer Council NSW.

“When Ricky was sick, it wasn’t introduced to us until the end, and since then I’ve learnt if it was in his life earlier it would have been different.”

Such care could have help with pain management and create support networks to help cancer patients stay close to their homes and families, as well as manage the side effects of their illness and treatments better.

“There were things he wanted to do, like jumping out of a plane, that with the right management he would have been able to do,” Mrs Jensen said.

The difficulty is a lack of funding, despite evidence that shows better funding palliative care would decrease the burdens on hospitals — one case study indicated a $60 million increase in funding would save $80 million in the long run.

The NSW government allocates about $60 million less than Victoria.

Mrs Jensen knows her son, a former North Albury Hoppers player, would be pleased to know his fight to help others was carrying on.