The 59-year-old had seen a number of doctors, and was on medication and cortisone injections in a bid to fix it, but nothing worked.
Finally, he was sent for an MRI to find out why the pain wasn’t improving.
The scan revealed a lump. A biopsy confirmed it was a cancerous adenocarcinoma tumour growing on his left hip.
Initially, Rick was told he had a life expectancy of 18 months. But two weeks ago, the news became more grim – doctors said three to 12 months was more realistic.
“All of a sudden, it’s life-changing,” the Rolleston resident said.
“There's been quite a few tears, and in your head you're going, ‘well, why me?’
“I've never smoked, I’ve never taken drugs, I’ve lived a reasonably clean life.
“I obviously had a few drinks every now and again, but I’m like, ‘how did this happen to me?’”
“You both look at each other and you just see your whole life go, just like that,” she said.
“And these people sitting in front of you are just to the point – they’re clinical, they gave a box of tissues and said ‘we'll leave you to it, take a minute to process what we’ve just told you.’
“I think we were both just in shock.”
When the MRI first showed a lump, doctors thought it might be a giant cell tumour, a benign bone tumour typically found in joints.
“We were thinking, ‘great, once this is confirmed, they’ll just open it up, cut it out, close it up, business as usual’,” Rick said.
“It wasn’t until they did the biopsy (about two weeks later), and came back about a week after that and said it’s cancerous.”
The cancer in Rick’s hip was secondary. The primary tumour was later revealed to be throat cancer in his oesophagus.
He had noticed swelling in his neck in the past, but doctors had brushed it off as a thyroid issue.
“I said, ‘look, it’s sore to push, it’s sore if I yawn’, but it sort of got fobbed off as more thyroid stuff and other bits and pieces.”
A year ago, his GP referred him for a CT scan on his neck, which was declined by Health New Zealand due to high demand for the service.
Rick believes an earlier scan could have revealed the cancer sooner.
“They’re obviously busy, whatever it is, but for me, that’s not really an excuse,” he said.
“If it had been cottoned on to earlier, it would have raised a whole lot more around maybe the hip and the throat.
“I don’t know how it exactly works, but maybe rather than it now being at stage four, maybe it was at stage three, I don’t know.
“Maybe there were options for it to be cured then, rather than 12 months later.”
Lou said there were other signs something more serious was going on than just a sore hip and a swollen throat.
“Over the space of this 12-18 months, he’s lost like 20kg, and not one doctor has investigated that other than asking if it was ‘intentional’.”
Said Rick: “The hip was the one that was causing me grief. It’s one of those ironic things, because the hip is secondary cancer, whereas the oesophagus is the main cancer, but I hadn’t had a sore throat, I hadn’t had anything other than (swelling).”
Four weeks ago, when a stent was put in his throat to allow him to eat, Rick was told by the surgeon he had just 18 months to live.
“Probably one of the worst things is that when you go along to see the doctors, you're waiting for just a little glimmer of something to go, ‘oh, that's good’,” he said.
“Then he says ‘three to 12 months’. What do you mean? That’s the hardest thing to take in.”
“That hit hard,” said Lou.
“Because suddenly you’ve lost six, eight, 10 months of what you’ve been told.
“We just kept getting slammed with something every time we went to the doctor, so we started dreading these visits because you think, ‘well, what are we going to be told now?’”
Rick is unable to continue his job in recruitment, while Lou now works from home in land registration. Their sons, Liam, 25, and Tyler, 22, live with them and do what they can to help.
“Telling the boys was the hardest part,” said Lou.
“Your friends is one thing, but telling your boys or your family is very different in the way that they respond.
“We just sort of sat and watched their faces, and you could see, we had just had our world ripped out from under us – and we’ve just done the same to them.”
The family is selling their house and downsizing, and also selling their caravan to adjust to a single income.
Christmas plans to go camping in Twizel with their extended family have been shelved.
Rick is currently undergoing radiotherapy and trying other ways to slow the cancer’s spread – taking vitamin C pills and other supplements while also cutting sugars and carbohydrates from his diet, which some cancers can feed on. He said the cost of that is around $700.
“It’s quite tough to gather that together, but our friends so far have been great and I’ve got a big family, so they’ve been good.
“The idea is to beat it, obviously. The doctors don’t get to play God in this case.”
The family has a long association with the Rolleston Rugby Club. Liam and Tyler played for the division 2 side this year. Rick has played golden oldies and coached his sons’ junior teams, while Lou has helped out on club days.
President Nicky Ruki, a close friend of the family, has set up a Givealittle page to help them.
“We were pretty overwhelmed with that sort of offer,” said Lou.
“That’s that community spirit – the boys were five when they started playing there, so they've grown up through the grades, and you do become really good friends with the parents as well.”
“A little bit sore, a little bit of pain, but in general I feel okay. If I could move on this leg, I could hop in the car and go to the mall for a wander around. I’m not feeling like I have to vomit or anything else like that.
“Part of me almost feels some of the things we’re doing are working. It’s only been a couple of weeks, but it's so early on I could just be fooling myself with that conversation too.”
Rick said he appreciates the help he has had from friends and family.
“It does become quite a challenge. We've been very fortunate because we’ve got really good friends that have always just been there, all the time, for anything, which makes such a huge difference.
“They’ll buy biscuits for the dogs, knowing that it’s just another thing for us to have to worry about, or other little things just to help out.”
- To help support the Illes family, go to givealittle.co.nz/cause/rally-round-and-support-our-rrfc-whanau or scan the code below.
