In her last days, her thoughts are for her carers

By Samantha Elley

It’s not often a person gets told they only have a few months to live.

That was the experience of Irene Anderson recently after having a tumour removed.

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The Evans Head resident was diagnosed in August 2020 with a melanoma cancer.

It had started with a lump in the leg, which she did nothing about for three weeks until a nurse friend told her to get it looked at.

“While the cancer was in my leg, the primary source was eventually found between my toes two years later,” she said.

“It’s had two years of running about my body.”

With the cancer metastasizing, or growing throughout her body, Irene knew there was no coming back from such a diagnosis.

“I am at peace with it,” she said.

“I am 71 in June and I have had a pretty good life.”

Understandably, her family, including her husband, two children, grand-children and sisters, were upset to be told her days were numbered.

But despite her traumatic news, Irene was more concerned for the nurses in the public health system she had been in contact with in one of her most recent hospital visits at Lismore Base.

“I had fluid on the lungs and gone into hospital in an ambulance,” she said.

“I went in on Monday and it wasn’t until Thursday that I got the drain.

“They just don’t have the staff.”

Irene said her heart went out to the nurses for the amount of work they do.

“Our health system is falling apart,” she said.

“Our local nurses aren’t getting paid anywhere near what the overseas nurses who come in are receiving.”

A media spokesperson from the NSW Nurses and Midwives Association said a few different incentive packages have been used by Local Health Districts (LHDs) to boost recruitments and fill long-term empty vacancies over the past year or so.

“In the June 2022 budget, the NSW government announced a Rural Health Workforce Incentive Scheme, because of the recruitment/retention issues experienced across the state, also in response to the rural, regional and remote health inquiry that had taken place,” the spokesperson said.

“This incentive scheme is being rolled out LHD by LHD, so it’s not entirely consistent.

“That said, public sector nurses and midwives in NSW are all paid under award rates.”

For Irene, the work the nurses do for her has literally been her lifeline and she knows they are worth so much more.