Sentenced to death.

By Peter Davy.

Imagine Being Told You Are Going To Die

To understand everything on this site you have to start at the beginning... and for me... the story below is the beginning. This is a true story on my Medical Records but I've written it below in active form. It's actually pulled from a book I started writing about my experiences years ago. Just remember every word is true and can be backed up by my family and doctors and medical records...

"You have five days to live." I've never seen a doctor cry before but I could swear his eyes were wet as he gripped my arm and told me the news.
"You have one of the biggest brain tumours ever seen by the Wanganui Hospital MRI team. It is at the base of the brain in a particularly difficult location. With a tumour that size the roots will be deep in the brain and by the time they cut it all out you'll most likely be a vegetable even if you do survive. Your survival chance is about 5%."
I could definitely see tears. "You have five days to put your financial and personal affairs in order then they're expecting you at the Wellington Hospital neuro-surgery unit. You need to say goodbye to your wife and children. Your neuro surgeon is Dr Hunn, he's very good."
What do you say to something like that? I've run into many people over the years who have joked about what they'd do if they knew they only had a few days or weeks to live. I had no plans at all. Only a shock so deep that to this day ten years later .... I'm still living in that moment as the doctor swept away my entire life in one sentence. You have five days to live. Say what?  I can still see that scene in my head because it is the exact moment my life ended. I have nothing now and it all happened on a lovely summer day with that simple single sentence from my local GP.
To give it some context we need to go back to the year 1990. Around about that time I started getting headaches while carrying out my job as a computer engineer and Information Technology Manager for the South Taranaki District Council. For the next ten years I kept going to see doctors and specialists who all insisted that there was nothing wrong with me other than the fact that I'm a neurotic who imagines headaches.... and yes that is EXACTLY word for word what some doctors said to me. It was even written several times in my medical files but in latter years all those original documents have been "lost" apparently. Very convenient for some doctors that some crucial medical files go missing after I made a complaint to the Health and Disability Commission. That's another story though.
Fast forward ten years to 1999 and the doctor who is telling me I have five days to live because they finally believed me and did a CT scan which swiftly became an MRI scan after the CT showed the tumour.  "The tumour is very difficult to get at," said the doctor. "They will need to remove your nose first then operate through the nasal area to get at the base of the brain. The nose can be stitched back on afterwards."
Was this for real? It didn't feel real. It felt like it was happening to somebody else and I was an observer at a distance.  "If only we had caught this tumour a few years earlier then it would be infinitely easier to manage," the doctor continued. I didn't bother reminding him that I had been reporting the headaches for ten years and had a big fat medical file to prove it. A file that is now mysteriously a third of the size.
"Thanks doctor," I said.... and walked out the door. What else is there to say? I wanted to be outside and feel fresh air and wind on my face, feel sunshine..... the shock was still only slowly creeping over me.... starting at the soles of my feet and creeping up my spine. A cold dark feeling of utter hopelessness and dejection. This is a true story remember? Imagine if you... the reader.... were told you had five days to live.... what would you do? Suddenly, out of the blue.... on a nice sunny day... a routine trip to the doctor to get some scan results...  imagine how you would feel. Put yourself in my place. Words can't describe it.
Let me explain EXACTLY what it is like to be told you have five days to live. Prior to that moment I had lived my life like most middle class people. I chased success and money just like all the other people I knew. Worked hard, long hours, university study... but it had been worth it. I was a manager, I made $60,000 a year in 1999 and I had staff working for me. I had a custom built office and everybody I knew respected me because I was good at what I did.
Thirty seconds after being told I had five days to live and my whole life up until that point meant nothing. My wife and two children mattered but my career and the money suddenly seemed completely pointless. What use is money in a coffin? Why had I wasted ten years in a suit and tie fixing computers just so I could turn around and die? My world no longer made any sense at all and to this day it still makes no sense. When I walked out the door of that doctor's office, into the sunshine, nothing looked the same anymore. All these people charging around doing who knows what? All the cars, the houses, the trees.... in one week's time I would no longer be part of that world anymore. I would be stone cold dead. That's all I could think about. It was like a fog came down between me and the world around me. There was no use being interested in anything or getting attached because soon I would be gone. No use wanting anything at all. No point to anything. Reality was like watching an old movie that was already beginning to flicker and fade away. It wouldn't be my reality much longer so was it really even reality at all? My mind was already starting to get all twisted up just trying to process the information.  I think I started going crazy that day.
That is the reason I am writing this book. I don't understand what happened. I don't understand the way I've been treated. I don't understand the NZ government and the things they did to me later on in this true story. I don't understand the coverup by the medical profession and by the police. I don't understand why my employer at the South Taranaki District Council treated me the way he did after I was told that I was dying. I don't pretend to understand anything anymore. Maybe I'm a monster but I just can't see it. Maybe the tumour has made me mentally ill.
Certainly many of the things I've done in the ten years since that diagnosis... seem crazy... even to me... looking back. I think I just lost all perspective on what a "normal" life is... probably because I've never felt "normal" since. Now I truly understand how short life really is and how it can be snuffed out in an instant. It has made me irritated with people who hurt others and who cruise along as though there is all the time in the world to achieve whatever it is they want to achieve. It's made me extreme in much of the things I've done.... and maybe it made me crazy.
All I can do is write the truth and let the reader judge for themselves. Maybe the reader can understand better than me why certain things have happened. Personally I'm starting to believe that I'm cursed. Terrible things have happened to me and they continue to happen and I have absolutely no idea why.  Read on and judge for yourselves.
So what did I do for the next five days? What would you do? There was no bucket list, no skydiving.... I didn't rob any banks. Sure I thought about it. A free pass to do anything I liked. What could anybody do to me? I already had the death sentence. That's what it was like. The doctor was like a judge passing out the death sentence to a convict. "In five days time you will be taken to the gallows and hung by the neck until you are dead...." That's what the doctor might as well have said. There was nothing the police could do to me that was as bad as what was going to happen anyway.  So instead of robbing banks and creating bucket lists, I went into the deepest state of shock that I've ever been in and I think I may still be in that same state ten years later.
I did nothing but cry and say goodbye to people. I gave away all my belongings.... closed my accounts.... said goodbye to my wife Vicki and my two gorgeous children, Aaron and Lisa.  Five days later I drove alone from Wanganui to Wellington after making provisions for one of my brothers to pick up my car from the carpark of Wellington Hospital after the operation. That was meant to be my last drive.... ever! A lovely sunny day, people going about their business, people with lives.... it made me really sad to look at other people. It made me sad that I would no longer have dreams, no longer have a future. I felt dead inside even before I checked into the hospital.  I had to stay overnight and the operation was the next morning. A priest came to visit me that night. He was the hospital chaplain. He went on about the last rites (I'm Irish Catholic) and came to say goodbye to me the next morning. He looked very sad as well. I just felt dead inside.
I had a big battle going on in my head and it wasn't pretty. All my life I've believed in God. Up until that week. Now I was angry and I was having serious doubts. I've hurt nobody in my life and helped a lot of others... so what had I done to deserve this? I just couldn't get my head around any of it. One moment I'm a successful computer engineer at the top of my game and the next minute I'm about to get my brain sawn open and my future is a big cold hole in the ground.
One hour before the operation they were getting me prepped, putting pressure bandages on my legs to keep the blood flow going in my brain. A specialist endocrinologist came in and introduced herself as Dr Robin Toomath.  "Peter," she said, "I've had another look at the MRI scans and I think we may have made a mistake. Now that I have another look I'm thinking it may be a tumour of the pituitary gland at the base of the brain and not the brain itself. The tumour is so big it is hard to tell where it is actually growing from. If it is a tumour of the pituitary gland then it's called a prolactinoma and we may be able to treat it with experimental medication from the USA instead of cutting your head open. We'd like to try you on the medication for a few months to see if it works or not."
And that was that. Just like that. Sorry about the mistake, here's a prescription.... bye. No Social Worker, no psychologist, no anything.  Okay now you probably think that I should have been overjoyed.... but I simply went into deeper shock. I'd given away everything I owned, left my wife, quit my job and they weren't even sure that it was a prolactinoma. I still might have terminal brain cancer. The specialist said it might take two years before they knew for certain if the medication worked. When I walked out of that hospital I just felt really, really weird. As though it was all happening to somebody else and I was watching from afar. I felt totally disconnected from all the events that were happening. There was nothing in my coping skills experience to prepare me for what was happening. I honestly had absolutely no idea what to do. If ever there was a time in my life that I needed professional advice then that was it. I didn't get any though.
The main problem was that nobody knew for certain yet just what exactly was wrong with me. There was no point in trying to get my old life back if I was going to die in a few months anyway. I was stuck in limbo. How do you focus on a job and a career when you might only be around for a short time longer? Seriously, how do you appear to genuinely give a shit about a broken computer network when you might be dead in a week?  All my adult life I'd been a control freak. I'd also been totally confident in my own abilities to survive in the big bad world. Up until then I'd believed that I could cope with anything.... and to date I had. Suddenly I had zero control over my life. In one day I'd lost twenty years of planning, striving, studying... lost my marriage, my career, my income, my belongings... To this day I have never recovered that self confidence and never will. I discovered how fickle life really is. It gets worse.... and this is where the story really starts.
The experimental medication called Bromocriptine made me vomit 24/7. All I did all day long was throw up. Now I was simply too sick to even care. If I was a dog they would have shot me to put me out of my misery. That would have been doing me a favour. Weeks, then months went by... and all I did was vomit. I couldn't work, think, eat, sleep.... just throw up. One day I was earning $60,000 per annum and the next day I was on an invalid's pension of something like $9,000 a year. My credit card bill on it's own was more than that. One day I had a line of $40,000 instant credit on call, one week later and I have creditors blacklisting me because I can't meet interest payments. Until that day I'd never missed a single payment or had bad credit in my life.
I set my wife and kids up independant and moved into a flat alone so that my wife would get used to life without me. I was still sure I was going to die because I felt so damn ill all the time. The doctors couldn't say for sure yet if I had terminal cancer or not. I spent most days curled up somewhere in a foetal position, only moving to throw up in a bucket. Two years went past. I spent most of it in the foetal position although I did find the time to set my wife up with my brother Michael. I figured that if I wasn't going to be around to look after her then I better make sure she was cared for. So I got her together with my brother and they're still together to this day.
Back to the vomiting. That was my life and it still would be my life if it hadn't been for the weed. One day I get on the internet and go to some website in the USA frequented by other patients on the same medication as me. They're all saying the same thing. The ONLY thing that stops the vomiting is cannabis. Now I hadn't smoked cannabis since I was a teenager about twenty-five years before. I didn't even drink alcohol at the time. I was a dead straight up guy. Where would I even get cannabis?
Long story short... I eventually tracked down some cannabis and tried it. BANG! Instant miracle. Now you don't see many miracles in real life. They're few and far between and very few things in life live up to the hype of what they're meant to do. This was different. One joint and I never threw up for the first time since I was on the medication. Not only did cannabis work but it worked 100%. I have never vomited from that medication as long as I have had access to cannabis. Not only did it stop me vomiting but I immediately felt better all over and within hours I was writing out job applications determined to turn my life around and make the most of a very bad situation.
Within six months I was working in Australia as a computer engineer on some of the most complex computer networks I've encountered in my travels. Everyday I smoked weed and went to work and not a single soul knew. It truly was a miracle for me. The miracle that has become the worst nightmare of my life. Thanks for the most part to the efforts of the NZ Police.... If they had let me grow my Medical Marijuana in peace then I'd probably still be a top computer engineer... but once you get busted that first time... it's on your record and you can't get work and you're a target for the police for the rest of your life. You'd think being diagnosed with a brain tumour would be enough.... without the NZ Police kicking me in the guts for the rest of my life.   >>>>>>>>
ADDENDUM:  A few years after this mess I actually went to the Human Rights Commission and the Health and Disabilities Commission and told them how all this bad stuff had happened to me... like losing my whole damn life and being arrested all the time. They basically told me "We can't look into anything that involves bad decisions you made yourself. Those decisions are your responsibility alone... sorry."
You know how there's meant to be all these great Government Departments that you can go to for help? You go into hospitals and doctors and they have all these posters on the wall about who to go to help.... well I tried okay... I really did try... and got told that it was all my own fault. That's what I'm still being told to this day.
All I can say to all those cops who have busted me, the parole officers who have judged me, the judges that have sentenced me.... all these people with good health and great jobs and a nice life.... TRY WALKING A MILE IN MY SHOES...... then we'll see how clever you are with the blame game...
None of you have a damn clue what I've been through.... all I've ever done is tried to survive the best I can... without any help from any of you... I've done what I could... in my own way... to keep myself from ending up hanging at the end of a rope. So thanks for fucking nothing the lot of you!