Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 499
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[Page 499]
(34)
more than previously. But our happiness over her improved health was soon shattered by the discovery (in the first instance by her own self-examination) that she had a small growth on one of her breasts. I accompanied her to one of Sydney's leading cancer specialists, Doctor Newton, who confirmed our worst fears. He removed the affected parts at the "Mater" hospital early in 1954. Madge had detected the abnormality early, but unfortunately, three vital weeks had passed before Madge could see the specialist, get a bed in the hospital, and be operated upon. The current medical opinion was that if secondary symptoms did not show up on the skin within five years of the primary operation, the patient was in the clear. But within a few months of this five-year period Madge became very ill and had to take to her bed. She was unable to keep food in her stomach and then her lungs became congested with fluid that had to be removed by a specialist. Neither the specialists or our very efficient Manly doctor could save her: they, or special nurses, gave her injections of pain-killing and tranquilising drugs. I will never forget the shock I felt when the local doctor came downstairs from his usual morning visit to tell me the worst, that the dreaded "secondaries" were at work and that Madge was unlikely to live for more than another few months, at the most.
I did not tell Madge this and I never learned if she knew. Right to her last hours she believed that she would get better and I just couldn't tell her otherwise. Our enjoyment together of our old age in the "dream home" was just a dream that ended so soon and so tragically. I felt very desolated and with Alan married - only about a week before Madge died, while he was honeymooning off the Queensland coast - and settling in with his bride at "Afton Water", I felt very alone in the world, especially when I returned at night to the big empty house where I lived alone for another year, going daily to the city or out into the Mascot industrial suburbs in connection with my work for Automatic Fire Sprinklers Ltd. Bill Chisholm and his