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. 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.
James Valentine: “I decided how to deal with my gut by listening to my gut”. Credit: James Alcock “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.
“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.
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.” Valentine said “a very simple fact” helped him make the decision.
“I could do [the endoscopic treatment] first, and then if it doesn’t go right, if something else recurs, I can go and have an esophagectomy or other treatment after that. So I just went, well, I’ll just throw that dice.”.
