Uncertainty doesn't agree with me. I like to plan ahead, but there are only some things we can control. I may have five years, ten, or perhaps, twenty years to live.

You’ll find Peter B. Williams, 64, at the Shamrock Hotel in Echuca, Thursday nights, where he runs the trivia quiz.

I am a 59 year old R.N. Division 1 nurse with 34 years' experience and throughout my whole career I had contact with palliative patients. The last 4 years I was solely in contact with advanced cancer and palliative clients. In May of 2012 I received the shock diagnosis of malignant, disseminated Gastro-Oesophageal cancer Stage 4. The cancer had spread to my liver and lymph nodes without any warning.

My name is Elizabeth Short. Over the last 11 years I have lost three close family members to cancer, and one to suicide.

My dad was a saw-miller all his life, and at the end it was hard to stop him from working seven days a week. He would often leave in the dark and come home in the dark and keep working and working.  He once said to mum that all he wanted was to be successful in life; it was a family business, he was the third generation and my brother has now taken over the sawmill.

My father was diagnosed with cancer of the lower oesophagus and stomach after collapsing in the street due to anaemia. At that stage, he was already suffering from prostate cancer. 18 years earlier he had recovered from a cardiac arrest, followed over the years by several small heart attacks and severe angina.

I’m sitting here in tears because I don’t even know where to start, I cannot understand as human beings how we can let people suffer when there is something we can do about it.

I guess the best place to start is where ‘our’ journey all began. It was Winter 2013 and Bill hadn’t been feeling quite ‘right’. (He had undergone surgery 2 years earlier for removal of a tumour in his bowel. He had seen the gastroenterologist the previous November (2012) for a check up, and after an endoscopic exam was told, ‘all good, we won’t need to see you for 3 years’.) He had seen our GP and went in for a CT scan, and was referred back to the gastroenterologist. He went in to see the Dr, I remained in the car, and came out and said ‘I need to go see a lung specialist right now, I now have lung and liver cancer and only have 6-12 months to live.’