CANCER was the last struggle Eleanor Angwin thought both her husband and her father would have to face.
In June 2012, Eleanor and her husband Tony were told the devastating news that he was diagnosed with a rare form of appendix cancer.
The news came just before second child Nathaniel’s first birthday, and during a stressful time when eldest daughter Arielle, 4 at the time, was receiving various hospital treatments after being born at 27 weeks gestation due to two auto-immune conditions.
“It was a big shock when it happened,” Eleanor said. “We were actually scheduled to do the Mater Little Miracles walk on the Sunday, and Nathaniel’s first birthday party afterwards, but we ended up cancelling that.”
The cancer can only be treated with laparoscopy, or keyhole surgery specific to the abdominal and pelvic regions.
Chemotherapy is the last option, as it requires cutting open and isolating the abdominal region, treating it with heated chemotherapy directly on the stomach.
If one lot of news was not enough, Eleanor found out weeks later that her father, Brian Hammerton, had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
“When Dad was diagnosed, we were saying that he just copied Tony and didn’t want him to get all the attention,” Eleanor said.
“I guess in some ways for Tony and Dad, going together in this, they are at least supporting each other a bit.”
While Tony’s cancer is treatable every six months with the laparoscopy, her father’s cancer is incurable.
Through the two diagnoses and the difficulties with Eleanor’s pregnancies with both children, the married couple of almost 13 years have found a graced refuge in God.
“Gradually, it’s brought us to a different place in our faith,” Eleanor said. “[Tony] has been home a lot and saying the Rosary a lot.
“He’s discovered it again – he’s always known about it growing up, but he’s found a lot of comfort in praying the Rosary.
“He’s coming to a place where we know we can’t change it, it’s not in our hands, so whatever happens is the way it’s meant to be.
“As Tony said to me, ‘whatever path that is, whether it’s a path I don’t like, and same as the kids for whatever reason, that’s witnessing to other people why that’s the way, that we have to trust that it’s the best, that it’s the way God wants it to be’,” she said.
Scripture has also been a great strength for Tony, and he said he had recently been meditating on the parable of the sower and the seeds and how fitting it was in his situation.
“That passage, for me, is really talking about growing deeper in your faith,” he said. “The seed that falls on the thorns, the devil just takes away any opportunity for them to grow deeper in their faith,” he said. “I think, shame on me for having a shallow faith before, and now I cling to those words, to be the seed in the fertile soil, and go deeper in my faith.
“Whether I live or die, whatever God wills is the best.”
While Tony grows in faith with Scripture and the Rosary, Eleanor said she had been reminded of appreciating the daily things in life through popular Christian devotional God Calling and praying a Novena to St Peregrine, patron of cancer patients.
Nourished by their daily spiritual routines, Tony and Eleanor have also grown closer in their marriage.
“Being married, and having God at the centre of your marriage, I think has helped us even to grow throughout all three experiences,” Eleanor said. “It is easy, I guess, for some people, in those sort of situations, to, if you didn’t have God at your centre, to take that stress out on each other, rather than giving it to God first.
“Certainly there were one or two times when we did start to experience that tremendous stress, but I think being Christian and Catholic and just always remembering that faith we have always brought us back to the real thing we’re facing here, and not taking it out on each other, but praying together and looking forward.
“We try, even though the kids are young, we try and incorporate as much prayer and just talking about Jesus in everyday life, not making it a one-hour-a-week-at-church thing.
“We’re always trying to, I guess in any incidental situation, talk about how Jesus would feel about this, and what we do for Him, as well as doing other routines – prayers before bed, grace before meals.”
In almost six years of stress, uncertainty and enormous suffering, Eleanor said it had been the path to greater faith in God.
“It’s only through suffering really that you can grow in your faith, I think,” Eleanor said.
“Going through everything we have with Tony, I think we’ve just grown in strength, in trust, in belief that all will be well regardless of what that is. We don’t know what that is.
“If we hadn’t have been through the kids, I’d really hate to think how I would have coped with Tony’s diagnosis. “I don’t think I would have handled that as well. It’s what they say, ‘every new challenge you face, hopefully you learn and grow’.
“I’ve had a lot to get me through it.
“Although you know in your head that’s the way it’s meant to be, I think physically whether you’re actually coping with that is a different thing. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed and down in the dumps.
“For a while, I found it really difficult to sit in church alone, by myself, if Tony was sick. I found I was thinking and praying so much and it was getting really emotional.
“But over the last three or four months, God has been helping me with that, just that faith and trust and strength in whatever’s going to happen.
“I’m not as emotional about it; I’ve surrendered it to God, and I say, ‘Do what you will, Lord’. It certainly does make you stronger.
“I think I’ve learnt to trust more that this is the plan. It’s not in my control, not in Tony’s control, and nothing the surgeons will do, it’s not in any of our control. It’s what will be. The way it plays out is the way God wants it to play out.”
A week before this interview, Tony and Eleanor had one of the six-monthly routine check-ups, and while the doctors ruled out cancer for now, they did find abnormal tissue on the abdomen.
“Some people would say, ‘it’s not cancer therefore it’s not back, so free and easy’,” she said.
“But having six-monthly check-ups, and looking at another operation in three months, he always feels like he’s got cancer on his back.
“Tony’s said if it gets to five years with no recurrence then it’s apparently very good.
“But I said to Tony, ‘we’ll be looked after, things will be okay’. And you just have to trust.
“I think I’m much more able to say that without being a blubbering mess which is what I would have been back with Arielle.”
And while the kids are too young to truly understand what’s going on in the family, they constantly remind Tony and Eleanor of joy, hope and love, and that Jesus is looking out for them.
“Thank you for looking after us,” Arielle said.
