Touching reason behind Aussie’s bid for 350km Norwegian hike
A young Aussie has revealed how a problem with his ears led to the accidental discovery of something much more sinister.
Illness
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A young Aussie has revealed how he is putting his body on the line so no young person goes through what he has experienced.
Andrew Rhodes’ brain cancer was discovered by accident. He’d been having issues with his ears equalising and it turned out he had broken his jaw.
“But, in the process of finding that out, I had a CT scan done on my sinuses and the radiologist picked up something that just didn’t look right,” Mr Rhodes told news.com.au.
The Melbourne man said he was ordered to get an MRI on his brain as soon as possible, but he didn’t think too much of it until the receptionist mentioned he’d have to get a needle halfway through to insert dye and his needle phobia kicked in.
He got the scan and a few days later was sitting in his doctor’s office to get the results.
“He sat me down and told me they’d found a tumour on my brain that was six centimetres cubed, so about the size of a billiard ball,” he said.
The doctor offered to call one of his parents but when neither picked up, he remembered leaving the office and going to the ground floor bathroom to splash water on his face.
He was on the verge of tears but did everything he could to muster up a steely attitude before jumping in the car to call his dad.
“He picked up the phone, and as soon as I heard his voice, the emotions came out. I just couldn’t speak. And then he thought I was playing a prank on him,” Mr Rhodes recalled.
The 35-year-old said his father thought he was with his brother, Tom, and the pair were playing a joke until his mother recalled he had his appointment. He had to break the news to his family, and his partner.
“I think once you really tell people, it becomes reality. It’s not just something that is a private moment,” he said.
“It’s sort of like, okay, this is actually it’s going to affect me, but it’s going to affect those that I hold dearest and love the most.”
He said telling them was almost worst than getting the news himself. Doctors recommended an aggressive treatment, which meant surgery. In the three years since, he’s had one scare that has been regularly monitored but he hasn’t had to go back under the knife.
However, his scans have just been pushed from every three months to every six months.
“It’s good because I found with the three month scans, it’s sort of always chasing you whereas every six months, it gives you a little bit more breathing space,” he said.
“Because one thing I found, and I think a lot of people with brain cancer experience or probably any type of cancer, is the issue of scanxiety.”
After Mr Rhodes operation on his brain tumour, he had a lengthy recovery period of nine months. After four months, he could read again so his mum picked up some magazines from the library for him. One featured a profile on the Overland Track in Tasmania, which is a seven day hike. He knew that was the goal he wanted to set for himself to know he had well and truly recovered from the procedure.
So, in 2023, he did just that. And, raised a whopping $41,000 for The Brain Cancer Centre, which was founded by Carrie Bickmores Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer.
“I remember walking the track and getting in the bus to get back to Launceston after completing the hike, and turning on my phone and just like having these like flooded messages and everyone sort of getting behind me,” he said.
But, he felt like the Overland Track ended up being too easy after all the training and work he did to get prepared for it and the idea sparked to do the MASSIV ruta in Norway solo – a 350km track that encompassed four of the country’s national parks that no Aussie has ever completed.
Mr Rhodes, who studied and lived in Norway for a year, felt like it was a good metaphor for what he’d been through and a good way to raise money once again for The Brain Cancer Centre.
So, at the end of August, Mr Rhodes began his hike and knew the first three days — which everyone claims to be the toughest of the 18-stage hike — would be brutal.
“I was about three hours into the hike when I came across my first river crossing, and because they’d had a significant amount of rain in the week prior the rivers were quite high and flowing really fast,” he said.
A moment of not paying attention saw Mr Rhodes slip on a rock and his toe jammed into a jagged rock and when he looked down, his big toe nail was hanging by a thread. The rest of his foot was cut up and scraped.
Immediately, he realised he couldn’t hike for another three weeks with an injured toe but, stubbornly, he finished out the day and hiked 24km in 12 hours.
When he got to the hut where he was supposed to camp for the night, and he reassessed the damage to his foot, cleaned it and bandaged it up.
He decided to push through the next day but for the entire 26km hike he was caught in the rain. By the time he made it to the next cabin, it was dark, there was no food and his phone was waterlogged.
Mr Rhodes decided to sleep on it, and decided to go back to Oslo, get a new phone, get his foot looked at and continue on his hike. But, Norway is essentially a cashless country and he struggled to get back to where he needed. He had to rely on the kindness of strangers.
At one point, he had to go to a hotel lobby to ask for directions to the nearest hospital and when a staff member asked him if he needed help, he burst into tears as the emotion of the day and desperately wanting to get back on the trail got to him.
When he got to the hospital, it was advised that he needed to have the toenail surgically removed and he should stay off it for a while to reduce the change of infection. He was devastated, but knew deep down if he got back on the trail as soon as he wanted to, he wouldn’t make it to the end.
“I was wanting this to be this really positive experience, obviously for myself, but because it was going to be such a long hike, I saw it in such a great opportunity to really create content and really highlight over a three-week period what I was doing and why I was doing it,’ he said.
“I thought that I’d probably have a shot at sort of achieving somewhere similar to the amount of money that I raised last year.”
But, he also recognised that he had just hiked 50km in some of roughest terrain in the world — something he should be proud of.
Since he announced he wouldn’t be able to do the hike this year as planned — but would likely take part again next year — he’s had many people from the brain cancer community express an interest in joining him next year. He said a personally disappointing situation has become something that could be an incredibly positive experience for many.
At the end of the day, Mr Rhodes wanted to raise awareness about many die within five years of their brain cancer diagnosis — a figure that hasn’t changed in 30 years. He wants to raise money for the Brain Cancer Centre so that more is known — and more can be done to treat — the horrific illness.
More information about Mr Rhodes’ hike can be found here
Originally published as Touching reason behind Aussie’s bid for 350km Norwegian hike
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