Jarryd Roughead’s special thank you to donor who saved his life
After being diagnosed with skin cancer, Jarryd Roughead was facing a $400,000 medical bill, but a generous donor stepped in to help ensure he could get the radical treatment. Now Roughy reveals the special gesture he made to the donor after his first game back.
Fiona Byrne
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Hawthorn great Jarryd Roughead says he is a better person for having battled and beaten cancer.
And with the birth of his son Will on Tuesday, a brother for his daughter, Pippa, 2, Roughead’s focus is family and the future with his goal to be a “good dad and husband” and to one day be a grandfather.
“Obviously you don’t wish this upon anyone, to have to go through that (cancer), but I think I am definitely a better person for having to go through it,” Roughead said on the eve of the launch of his autobiography, Roughy.
“It gave me more perspective on life for sure. You understand that there is much more to life than football.
“Footy, that was all I had known (up until his diagnosis).
“It was not a bad thing, but being a 29-year-old male that had played footy for 12 years at that point, it was like right, you understand once that is taken away what you thought was everything is nothing. If I live to be 100 footy is going to have been just 15 per cent of my life.
“First and foremost you want to be a good dad and husband.”
The four time premiership player’s inspirational and dignified cancer battle started in 2015 when he had a melanoma removed from his lip. In 2016 doctors made the chilling discovery of four spots on his lung.
His oncologist, Prof Grant McArthur at Melbourne’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre recommended immunotherapy using two new drugs that were still at trial stage, Yervoy and Opdivo.
Treatment started in June 2016 and was expected to cost more than $400,000 as the drugs were not on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. They are now.
The first three doses each cost $36,000.
Fortunately he responded so quickly to the radical drugs he did not need to do a prolonged course of treatment as his doctors originally expected.
Roughead revealed he was helped financially through the treatment by Geoff Harris, a former Hawthorn board member and co-founder of Flight Centre.
“You are forever grateful to him,” Roughead said.
“That first jumper I played in when I came back, he has that now.
“I have already sent him the book, we are always in touch updating him on our life.
“It is nice to thank him and just show him what I have been able to do post this (illness) with his help.”
The treatment was not easy. For a start he and his wife Sarah were living in their house while it was being renovated.
“We had a dog and a new cat and were living between three rooms with a TV, fridge, kettle, toaster, rice cooker and a bucket to wash the dishes in,” he said.
Then his body started to react strangely, most alarmingly the nerves in his feet were being attacked by his immune system.
“That happened when I was full of the drug, my body was full,” he said.
“I was supposed to be up for four doses, but they made adjustments because they realised if I was ever going to get back to my job, which was footy, that I kind of needed my feet. It was not great.”
In December 2016 Roughead was told by Prof McArthur he was cancer free.
“When Grant told me I was clear he said, ‘I expect you to live to be a granddad’,” he said.
“He has been able to meet Pippa and I sent him photos of Will the other night, and also sent them to Donna Milne, my nurse.
“Our relationship is much more than that of patient, doctor and nurse.”
Family and the future are firmly at the front of Roughead’s mind as he navigates a new chapter in his life, having joined the St Kilda Football Club in a role that involves list management, leadership and mentoring.
He is not sure that coaching is his destiny but is enjoying what he describes as his first job.
“I have never had a job,” he said.
“You go from school at 17 to then move to Melbourne and start playing footy, to now being 33 and it is, ‘Right, this is where you get your first job,’ and you are wearing chinos and shirts to work for the first time.
“Footy as a playing career is done, so it is now about how you can help the new kids at St Kilda and how you can be a good dad as well.”
Roughy is released on August 4.