People often ask why I keep fighting for proton therapy here in Australia.

“If the government paid for you to go overseas, shouldn’t you just be grateful?”
“Aren’t you lucky they covered the bill?”
“Your child survived. Isn’t that enough?”

Let me answer that properly.

Put yourself in these shoes.

You hear the word cancer and the world stops. You’re told the team will fight hard for the best outcome, but you’re also quietly warned not to Google too much because the statistics can break you. You’re told to focus on tomorrow. Just get through tomorrow.

Now imagine walking into Emergency with your child burning with fever, looking up at you like you have the magic to take the pain away. You’re surrounded by nurses who smile, but you know them well enough now to read their eyes. They’ve become your family. And you can tell something is wrong. Something they’re not saying out loud.

Then morning comes and you’re told, “She made it through the night.”
And you think: How close did we just come?

You’re in a ward with eight rooms. Eight families going through hell behind eight closed doors. You hear crying. You see chemo bags being carried past. You see sunken faces, shiny heads, brave little smiles that don’t make sense for what they’re enduring.

You start smiling at other parents in the corridor, not because you’re okay, but because you share a bond you never asked for. You’re all connected now, forever, by the same fear.

Then you’re told it’s time to go home.

Home. After a week of chemo, transfusions, endless medications, alarms, needles, nausea. After being told you need gloves to change your own child’s nappy because the toxicity in their urine can damage your skin. Think about that for a second. Something has raced through their tiny body… but you have to protect yourself from it.

And when you go home, you’re told to limit contact with people. Reduce infection risk. No playground. No playdates. No normal life. You’re looking at a child who can’t even fully understand what’s happening, and you’re saying “no” to the world on their behalf.

Now imagine being told: Next, you have to go overseas.

Away from your support network. Away from the nurses and doctors who know your child and know you. Away from the people who have held your hand through the worst moments of your life. Away from your spouse. Away from your other child. Away from the only place that feels remotely safe.

Imagine flying for 30+ hours with an immunocompromised child. Standing in customs lines packed with holidaymakers coughing and sneezing while you juggle bags, pram, car seat, medication, paperwork, and a sick child pressed against your chest. Trying to work out when you can eat, when you can drink, where you can go to the toilet without exposing them to more risk.

Then boarding plane after plane while you feel people staring, irritated at the sound of your child crying, like you’re an inconvenience to their holiday. And you swallow it. Because what else can you do?

Then imagine being told your child’s cancer is so aggressive their body can’t take a break from chemo even while they’re having radiation. So you spend weeks being shipped between hospitals. Ambulance rides. Fasting. More fasting. Holding a hungry child who doesn’t understand why you won’t let them eat, because they need a general anesthetic again tomorrow.

And they’re hungry because they’ve vomited everything up. Chemo. Steroids. Nausea. Pain. Their body rejects food, and yet the schedule demands fasting.

Now imagine six weeks of laying your child down every morning and watching the doctor put them to sleep. Feeling their body go limp in your arms. Handing them over. Walking out. Waiting. Listening. Then hearing them wake in fear or pain down the corridor and running back, because you were made to wait until it was “safe” to return.

Imagine rebuilding trust with a whole new hospital team, in a whole new country, while your team at home is asleep on the other side of the world.

Imagine having to fight for basic nutrition options because the menu doesn’t suit your child, and being told things like chicken tenders and chips are “fine” when you’re begging for fruit, vegetables, something with real nourishment. Imagine being so stuck in that room you end up eating whatever scraps your child can’t face, because you can’t leave without them screaming.

Imagine sleeping on a fold-out chair. Being woken every two hours for observations because the night staff don’t know your child yet. They don’t know the little tricks your home team learnt to change that toxic nappy without fully waking them. So you settle them for 45 minutes… and then you look at the clock and realise you’ve got another hour before it starts again.

Do you sleep? Do you shower? What if the water wakes them? Do you go to the toilet? Do you flush? What if that sound wakes them too?

Now imagine complications. Side effects. Conflicting medical opinions between teams. And your trusted doctors are asleep back home. You’re in the middle, holding all the fear, making decisions you never should have had to make alone.

Imagine doing that for two months.

I was lucky. Public funding meant my mum could be with me. Many families don’t get that. Many families are ripped apart by distance for birthdays, Christmas, the birth of siblings, missed milestones, missed everything.

So now, to the people who can help fix this: Anthony Albanese, Peter Malinauskas, Mark Butler & Chris Picton. I’m asking you to do something simple.

Imagine that child is yours.

In a country like Australia, families should not be forced overseas for a treatment the rest of the world already considers standard of care. Proton therapy is not controversial. It’s not unproven. It’s modern medicine. It’s about reducing harm where we can, so survivors don’t just survive, but live with the best possible chance of a healthy future.

We don’t need miracles. We need decisions.

Make one. Fund it. Build it. Deliver it.
So the next family who hears the word “cancer” doesn’t also have to hear: “Pack your life into a suitcase and leave your home to access the treatment your child needs.”

If you’ve read this far, please don’t look away.

Sign the petition. Share it. Send the message: Australia’s most vulnerable deserve standard care on Australian soil.