Days out from cancer surgery, the ABC’s James Valentine made a life-changing choice

ABC radio presenter James Valentine stepped away from the microphone six months ago after telling listeners a diagnosis of oesophageal cancer meant he needed “fairly dramatic surgery”.

The plan was for him to follow five weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy with an operation to remove most of his oesophagus and fashion a new one by attaching the top of his stomach to his throat.

James Valentine: “I decided how to deal with my gut by listening to my gut”.Credit: James Alcock

But as the popular broadcaster and musician made an upbeat return to ABC Sydney on Monday afternoon, he revealed that three days before surgery, he had opted for a different treatment.

“I ended up having quite a strange few months,” he said. “Because I announced it on the radio, I was contacted about an alternative.”

After meeting Professor Michael Bourke, the director of gastrointestinal endoscopy at Westmead Hospital, Valentine decided on a newer treatment that removed the cancer cells through surgery down his throat.

With a characteristic light touch, Valentine said he was “in perfect health now,” but his treatment was continuing. That included regular endoscopy ultrasounds and scans to monitor whether the cancer had returned and procedures to have a balloon inflated in his oesophagus to reopen it.

‘Something could recur in the next one or two years … if I get through [that], well then I’m probably pretty right.’

ABC radio presenter James Valentine

“I’m at a point where something could recur in the next one or two years,” he said. “That’s fairly likely.

“Hopefully then that’s treatable, and if I get through those couple of years, well then I’m probably pretty right.”

Valentine spent an hour of his first show back discussing “how to make big medical decisions” with Bourke, fellow ABC broadcaster Dr Norman Swan and joint Australian of the Year, Professor Richard Scolyer, who is undergoing treatment for a brain tumour.

Bourke said that when he heard about Valentine’s diagnosis he wondered if it was an early cancer that could be treated endoscopically. When he investigated, he found that to be the case.

ABC broadcaster Dr Norman Swan joined James Valentine on his first show back from his cancer diagnosis.

Valentine said he had three days to decide whether to switch treatments.

“I ring my surgeon, and I can hear his concern. ‘You’re too advanced, it’s too risky, we have to take out the whole oesophagus to make sure we get all the cancer’,” Valentine wrote in an article for ABC News.

He said he then had to choose between two people who were both sure they were right.

“In the end, I decided how to deal with my gut by listening to my gut,” he said. “I’d rather do something less invasive. I can deal with the risk of future cancer. I prefer that chance to the chance of morbidity.”

Speaking to this masthead after coming off-air, Valentine said it was “just bizarre” how quickly he went from thinking he was down to the last couple of months of enjoying life in a normal way, to getting another offer for surgery.

“It’s not that I’ve found a miracle cure,” he said. “It’s that I’ve swapped the kind of risk.

“The risk with a full esophagectomy is that it’ll take a very long time to recover, if at all. The risk with this is that you’ll recover - you’ll be fine again - but we’re going to have to keep a close eye for future cancer.

“So I could go for a test in six months, and they go, ‘Oh shit, sorry mate, it’s popped up again’.”

Valentine said that when he was facing the much more serious operation, he realised that he would much rather get back to radio than retire.

“I didn’t want to get a yacht and go round the Greek Isles and I’m not ‘must walk the Camino’,” he said. “I was like ‘I want to get back to the show’.”

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.