Podcast Episode: Cancer, Diverticulitis and Dentures ~ an Unlikely Trio

Pip: Ask Brett is where brett hayhoe writes about travel, health, and the kind of life events that most people would file under "things I'd rather not discuss at dinner."

Mara: Today we're in the territory of medical emergencies, chemotherapy's long reach, and what it costs — in years and in self-esteem — to get a smile back. Let's start with the unlikely trio of cancer, diverticulitis, and dentures.

Cancer, Diverticulitis and Dentures ~ an Unlikely Trio

Pip: This piece is doing something specific: it's stacking three serious medical events across different chapters of one life and asking what they add up to. Not a complaint — more of a reckoning.

Mara: The cancer chapter opens with characteristic understatement. After a swelling, an ultrasound, and a referral to a Toorak oncologist, the diagnosis lands in a single line: "Son, if you had private health insurance, you'd be on the operating table tomorrow morning and I'd be removing that testicle."

Pip: And the response was immediate. The oncologist's hands were visibly shaking, so brett declined the offer and went to Monash Medical Centre instead — where a different surgeon removed the testicle without incident, followed by six weeks of chemotherapy.

Mara: The diverticulitis episode actually comes first, chronologically. On Valentine's Day, the pain he describes is "being stabbed simultaneously by ten carving knives, with no relief whatsoever." On arrival at Cairns Base Hospital, internal leaking had given him roughly half an hour.

Pip: The doctor's bedside manner was, let's say, economical. "Well, the good news is it's not your appendix." Brett's reply is not suitable for broadcast.

Mara: He woke with a colostomy bag. The piece notes he was sent home with a crash course in stoma management — and the observation that the worst thing about a colostomy bag is finding shoes to match.

Pip: That line earns its place. But the third chapter — the teeth — is where the piece settles into something heavier.

Mara: Chemotherapy disintegrated the bone structure in his mouth. Teeth fell out without provocation. The dentist removed the entire upper row, left four on the bottom, and those eventually went too. The result was more than three years without adequate teeth — until a dentist named Dr. Adam fitted a full replacement set.

Pip: Three years of covering his mouth when he laughed. Avoiding photographs. The word he uses is "diminished" — a daily, grinding diminishment that doesn't announce itself but colors everything slightly darker.

Mara: The piece ends on what that restoration actually meant: "the self-esteem that a full set of teeth restores — the ability to laugh without thinking, to smile without covering, to exist in a photograph without dread — is worth every second of pain involved in getting there."

Pip: That's the whole argument. Some things are worth recovering.

Mara: Three separate emergencies, one through-line: what the body costs you, and what it takes to get pieces of yourself back.

Pip: Next time, more from the road — and probably more from the parts of the road nobody puts on a postcard.