“As a father, I feel like it’s my job to make sure my son gets to 18.”
That sentence lived quietly inside Paul long before cancer entered his family’s life.
It was not dramatic.
It was not heroic.
It was simply the kind of promise fathers carry without ever saying out loud.
When Jack was three years old, that promise was suddenly tested in ways no parent is ever prepared for.
Before cancer, Jack was unstoppable.
He was always moving, always running, always chasing something just beyond reach.
His mum, Kristen, describes him as outdoorsy, sociable, and completely fearless in the way only small children can be.
Jack didn’t walk through life.
He sprinted.
If he saw a bird, he chased it.
If he saw something interesting, he followed it without hesitation.
Kristen jokes that she was the mum at the park constantly yelling for him to come back.
Jack was living what his parents now call his “best life.”
At home, life was busy and loud.
Jack was three.
His little brother Finn was one.
Paul worked full-time as an electrician.
Kristen worked four days a week in the Public Service.
Their days were full of juggling schedules, childcare drop-offs, work deadlines, and the ordinary exhaustion of raising two young boys.
They had plans.
They talked about slowing down.
About making more time for family.
About enjoying these years before the boys grew too fast.
Then things started to change.
It had been a rough year health-wise.
The boys were constantly sick.
Colds passed back and forth like a routine.
Finn would get sick.
Then Jack.
Then Finn again.
Kristen remembers going months without working a full week because one of the boys was always unwell.
At first, nothing felt alarming.
This is what life with toddlers looks like.
Until it didn’t.
Jack became lethargic.
He started taking naps again.
At first, it seemed normal.
Then the naps got longer.
And longer.
And longer.
Eventually, it became difficult to wake him.
Daycare staff noticed it too.
They told Kristen they’d found Jack asleep on the grass after he’d been outside playing.
That wasn’t Jack.
He was the child who never stopped.
Something was wrong.
The moment that changed everything came one night at a friend’s house.
Jack had been happy.
Playful.
Laughing.
Then suddenly, he stopped.
He didn’t want to eat.
He grabbed his head.
He lay down on the floor.
“My head hurts,” he said.
“It hurts too much.”
Kristen didn’t hesitate.
She looked at Paul and said she didn’t like this.
They were going to the hospital.
Jack was put under observation.
Ten hours passed.
Nothing else happened.
No new symptoms.
Doctors sent him home with instructions to return if anything changed.
The next night, Jack complained of head pain again.
The next morning, he vomited.
Kristen didn’t wait.
She took him straight back to the hospital.
This time, things moved differently.
A CT scan was ordered.
Doctors’ expressions changed.
Kristen remembers being told, carefully, that it looked like there was “something there.”
Then they said Jack would need to be taken to Sydney.
They couldn’t say when.
They couldn’t say much else.
No one could explain what was happening.
All they could do was wait.
At Sydney Children’s Hospital, Jack went in for an MRI at 10 p.m.
That night blurred into something unreal.
Kristen had a social worker come to talk to her.
Then surgeons.
Then doctors.
One after another.
They shaved Jack’s head.
They placed markers across his scalp.
Kristen tried to listen.
Tried to understand.
Tried to stay calm.
Because Jack was watching.
And the last thing she wanted was for him to be scared.
The next morning, Jack went into surgery.
A biopsy was taken from a mass in the pineal region of his brain.
Afterward, Kristen and Paul were told what doctors believed it was.
Rhabdomyosarcoma.
A cancer more commonly found in soft tissue.
Almost unheard of in that part of the brain.
The cause was unknown.
Because it was so rare in that location, doctors feared it might not be the primary tumour.
They worried it could be cancer that had spread from somewhere else in Jack’s body.
That fear sat heavily between Kristen and Paul.
Fortunately, those fears turned out to be unfounded.
Through the Zero Childhood Cancer Program, Jack’s cancer was genetically analysed.
Doctors discovered it was a primary rhabdomyosarcoma caused by a DICER1 genetic variant.
It was devastating.
But it was also clarity.
A definitive diagnosis meant doctors could finally determine the best way to treat Jack.
“What Jack has is extremely rare,” Paul says.
He doesn’t believe there were any other cases like it in Australia.
But the diagnosis came quickly.
And that speed mattered.
Jack would need surgery.
But it wasn’t considered urgent.
Three weeks passed before the operation went ahead.
In that time, the tumour almost tripled in size.
When the oncologist sat them down, the reality was laid bare.
They would be there for at least six months.
Jack would need chemotherapy.
Radiation.
Further surgeries.
The strange silver lining was that the tumour was growing quickly.
Fast-growing tumours, they were told, often respond better to chemotherapy.
Jack went into surgery.
And when he woke up, he stunned everyone.
“He woke up the happiest boy I’ve ever seen,” Kristen says.
Soon, he was bouncing off the walls again.
Chemotherapy began.
The goal was to shrink the tumour.
It worked.
Jack then underwent a second operation to remove as much of it as possible.
During surgery, one of his optic nerves was slightly damaged.
One eye appeared offset.
But incredibly, Jack retained full vision.
After surgery, Jack developed tremors.
They lasted weeks.
For Paul, that was one of the hardest moments.
He realized Jack might not be the same child at the end of this.
That thought haunted him.
They didn’t know if Jack would survive.
And even if he did, they feared what life might look like afterward.
In Paul’s darkest moments, he wondered how fair it would be for Jack to live with severe disabilities.
“It felt like we’d lost Jack,” he says.
Like whatever came out the other side wouldn’t be him.
Jack’s journey was long.
Nine surgeries.
A biopsy.
Two tumour resections.
Six shunt surgeries.
Six rounds of chemotherapy.
Six weeks of radiation therapy.
Through it all, Jack amazed everyone.
He was calm.
Resilient.
Strong-willed.
Stubborn in the best way.
But there were moments that broke his parents’ hearts.
Steroids caused extreme hunger and aggression.
Jack’s weight ballooned.
He went from 16.4 kilograms to 24.
He sweated constantly.
He ate endlessly.
He yelled about what he wanted to eat next.
Watching it was devastating.
Radiation therapy was the hardest challenge of all.
Rather than put Jack under general anaesthetic every time, Kristen chose to prepare him mentally to go through it awake.
It was brutal.
But she did it.
Paul says he will forever be grateful.
It saved Jack from 28 general anaesthetics.
Something Paul admits he could not have managed himself.
When radiation ended, doctors decided to fast-track Jack’s treatment.
Because he was doing so well, chemotherapy started again immediately.
This time, it hit harder.
Each cycle took more out of him.
He recovered more slowly.
By the fifth cycle, he developed a high fever and spent six days in hospital.
Doctors said he needed six or eight cycles.
Paul and Kristen begged it wouldn’t be eight.
They started asking impossible questions.
Was the chemo now more dangerous than the cancer?
Where was the line?
How far was too far?
Jack’s oncologist recommended another surgery to remove whatever tumour remained.
The decision tore at them.
They agreed.
Then came the phone call.
On the morning the surgery was scheduled, Paul was on his bike trainer, trying to clear his mind.
The surgeon called.
The MRI was clear.
There would be no surgery.
In an instant, everything changed.
They were back home.
Having a barbecue in their garden.
Life, unbelievably, resumed.
Today, Jack is getting on with being a kid.
Treatment is finished.
His central line is gone.
He returns to hospital for regular scans, starting December 2023.
Paul knows the anxiety will come.
Before each scan.
But he also knows it will get easier.
Three months at a time.
One year at a time.
You learn how to live with it.
Jack’s story is not just about cancer.
It is about a father’s promise.
A mother’s strength.
A little boy who refused to disappear.
And a family who learned that survival is not just about making it through treatment.
It is about learning how to live afterward.
One scan at a time.
One breath at a time.
One future at a time.