How I accidentally sent my childhood cancer nurse to the Maldives – 18 years later

OK. Brace yourself.

On a scale of one to that video of the kid who gave his lunch to a homeless man and totally restored your faith in humanity, the story that I am about to tell you scores at least a ‘16 Heartwarming Photos of Lost Dogs Reunited With Their Families’.

It’s a story of wrongs righted and of justice served. Of tropical beaches and brutal chemotherapy regimens. Of the cruelty of children and the kindness of strangers. An 18-year-long epic that in the words of one friend “made me bawl my eyes out in a supermarket.”

This is the story of how Faye got to go to the Maldives.

This is Faye. Back in 1997, Faye was my cancer nurse. In that year, at the age of 11, I was diagnosed with an osteosarcoma (yes, the one from The Fault in Our Stars), a fist-sized lump growing out the back of my left knee. Treatment for cancer in those days was almost incomprehensibly vicious: a full year of relentless chemotherapy delivered in hospital stays that lasted for three to five days, matched with a seven-hour limb-salvage operation that left me in a wheelchair for more than a year.

The names of my chemotherapy agents remain etched into my brain to this day – Adriamycin, ifosfamide, methotrexate, cisplatinum, MTP-PE. I started vomiting within an hour of the first infusion and didn't really stop for the next 12 months. I was chundering 3-4 times a day, without breaking a sweat. I had two external lines inserted into my chest and a feeding tube put into my stomach; I lost my hair, grew ulcers down my throat, wrestled with crippling fevers, shed a fifth of my bodyweight and had to learn how to walk again. One night I woke up and the top layer of my lips just fell off, like half-melted butter. It was, to put it mildly, not a great year.

But, on the other hand, I did get my own Make-A-Wish, so it wasn’t all bad. And this is where Faye comes in.

So, Faye was working on the oncology ward on the time and her job was basically to make the life of the kids on the ward better. She'd play games with them or do craft or just sit and talk. Whatever they needed to make their far too difficult lives a little easier. I pretty quickly worked out that this also extended to the giving of massages, and so for that year Faye pretty much became my personal masseuse. She wasn't quite on call, but not a day went by when I wouldn't call her in to rub my feet, or give my back a going over or massage my scalp. We would talk as Faye gave me these massages and over the weeks and months I ended up getting a bit of an insight into her life.

One day Faye arrived at my bedside with a pile of brightly coloured travel brochures for the Maldives.

I pointed at them and said, ‘What are they?’

She let out a wry laugh. ‘Just a bunch of brochures for a holiday I’ll never be able to afford.’

While she was rubbing oil into my soles and talking about how much she needed a holiday, I picked up a brochure and started flicking through it. I was greeted by page after page of paradisal beaches, crystal blue waters and well-toned women in bikinis. I closed my eyes and could pretty much smell the coconut.

I just remember thinking to myself, "You know what, Faye? I'm going to take your dream and make it a reality... For me."

I cannot tell you how bad I feel about this in retrospect.

So, I told the people at the Make-A-Wish Foundation that I, an 11-year-old boy, wanted to go to the Maldives, favoured holiday destination of the retiree set. And they immediately hit me and Mum and Dad with requests for separate interviews, just to try and ensure that they weren't exerting undue influence on my decision. (Mum and Dad had to explain that, no, they'd simply managed to raise a child with the recreational tastes of a man 60 years his senior.) But convince them we did, and so, in the middle of 1999, Mum, Dad, my brother Liam and me, jetted off to a small island in the Maldives for ten blissful days of sun, sand and drinks served in coconuts. As a coda to the shared familial trauma of the previous two years, the experience really could not have been better.

And all I can remember thinking was, "Man, Faye really would have loved this."

So, in 2007, at the age of 22, I was diagnosed with cancer again. That's a story for another time, but the takeaway is that it inspired me to start doing stand-up comedy about my disease. On the back of that, in February last year, I performed a show called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Chemo back in my home town of Perth, Australia. Based on my book of the same name, it was an hour-long comedic odyssey through the non-stop hilarity that only two life-threatening cancer diagnoses can provide. The above Make-A-Wish material was getting a full rinsing.

As I ran through my lines outside the theatre before my last show, an unfamiliar woman in her sixties came up to me.

“Luke? Do you remember me?”

A dimly remembered picture swam into focus: a woman sitting at the end of my bed, rubbing oil into my feet.

“Holy shit! Faye!”

Eighteen years later and there she was. The kindly figure who had carried Mum and me through so many of the worst times, here to see a show in which I cackle madly about the time I stole her holiday dream for myself. I noticed that my palms were suddenly very clammy.

But tell the story I did and after it was done I pointed Faye out in the audience and thanked her for everything she’d done for me and for all the other kids of Ward 3B. The crowd gave her a huge round of applause and I moved on to the next bit.

At the end, as I was leaving the theatre, a man lunged out at me and grabbed me by the shoulder. “Did Faye ever get to the Maldives?”

I was a bit startled. “Uh. I don’t know... I mean, I did.”

He nodded once and then he was gone. I walked out a few minutes later and I find Faye leaning up against a wall, her eyes brimming with tears. I asked her what was wrong.

"The strangest thing has just happened to me," she said. "This man comes up to me and asks me whether I ever got to the Maldives. I told him I hadn't and then he said he wanted to send me. I tried to tell him he was being ridiculous, but he just said he had more money than he knew what to do with, and this just seemed like something small he could do for somebody who deserved it."

I don’t know who this man was, or why he did what he did, but in December last year, eighteen years after the fact, and after enriching the lives of hundreds of children with cancer, Faye finally made it to the Maldives. And now every time I feel a bit burdened by life, I just look at the photos she sent me and remember that there is still good in this world.

P.S. I can say from personal experience that Make-A-Wish is a pretty amazing organisation and if you ever find yourself with a few spare dollars you could do worse than to show them some support.