After more than 140 Angel Flight trips to Sydney for melanoma treatment, Rose Fletcher was given a formal all-clear this year. She was ready to relax for a while. Then she found a tumour on her knee. It’s been a hard journey. After 30 years’ hard work as a nurse at Warren hospital in central NSW, in 2010 Rose was diagnosed with stage four melanoma – the very worst kind. Within weeks of her diagnosis, cancer cells were found in several locations in her body, in her lymph nodes, her liver and her pancreas.
Rose was 50, and stage four melanoma patients have a life expectancy of 18 months on average. Her long and gruelling battle with melanoma began: 100 chemotherapy sessions, eight weeks of radiation, 20 surgeries.
From her home in Nevertire, more than 500km northwest of Sydney, Rose travelled to the city again and again for treatment.
Seven hours by car, 10 hours by bus or train, capped with Sydney traffic: the trip to the city would be an exhausting added burden for a severely ill patient. So Angel Flight came to the rescue with free and stress-free trips to Sydney.
Pilot Darryl Campbell, an Angel Flight volunteer with more than 30 years’ flying experience, owns a Piper Twin Comanche aircraft. He frequently flew Rose to and from Sydney – donating the use of his plane and his time.
“It just seemed that there’s a sense of purpose to it,” he says. “Most of the passengers are just in a bad, bad place in their lives.
“By doing something small, you’re doing something big for them. You’re actually making a difference to them.”
As a full-time manager of two RSL clubs, Campbell considers his Angel Flight volunteer work something that makes life a little easier for people who need a hand. His bosses are understanding and happy for him to volunteer as a pilot, and schedule his missions in and around his working days.
He remembers Rose was a bit anxious about flying to begin with.
“I took her on her very first flight, and it was a little bit rough coming into Sydney, and she didn’t go very well at all,” he says, remembering she might have punched him and later explained that at the time she thought they should turn around. These days, Campbell adds, she’s a veteran.
They developed a close relationship over the years and Rose has had the added comfort of flying with a pilot she knows well and trusts. She greets him with a kiss and cuddle, Campbell says, adding that her husband asks him to look after her.
Rose’s daughter, Simone Fletcher, says Campbell is a hero and Angel Flight a true humanitarian organisation.
“They show you what it truly means to give, doing something that can never be repaid, simply because it matters,” she says.
“We are so grateful to both Angel Flight and the Melanoma Institute. We have experienced the best of humankind and are so indebted to the incredible people we have encountered.”
Rose’s cancer treatment started with surgery to cut out the primary tumour on her head and remove her lymph nodes. Then the chemo began. Many different types of this often-debilitating treatment were tried to control the cancer: none worked.
“By June 2012, she was a palliative care patient,” Simone remembers.
“She was incredibly unwell and there was no foreseeable solution.”
Rose was eventually moved to hospice care at Warren hospital and, after more chemo, another remedy was tried – a new immunotherapy treatment.
It was a “game changer”, Simone says, adding the therapy effectively cured her mother, and the melanoma went into remission.
She picked up the threads of her life and took up exercising, seeing friends, volunteering with Meals on Wheels. Apart from the cancer, Simone says, she has had a full, happy and meaningful life.
This year, the Melanoma Institute formally discharged Rose Fletcher – her melanoma had been cleared.
“She’s 66 now, and since her treatment began, she’s had three grandkids and a marriage on my brother’s side,” Simone says.
“She’s had 16 years; we were lucky to get any of that time. Angel Flight was a godsend and that would be an understatement.”
Yet cancer hadn’t finished with Rose. She now has a new tumour, thought to be unrelated to the earlier melanoma, and possibly benign. The Angel Flight missions to Sydney will begin again.
“It’s just incredibly bad news from our perspective, but we can be celebrating the fact that she’s 16 years alive that we didn’t expect to have her for,” Simone says.
“We’re trying to say, ‘Hey, this is just a setback’; we’re so fortunate in every sense of the word.”