Councillor Thomson battles brain tumour

The Eurobodalla Shire councillor and former mayor was diagnosed with a rapidly growing tumour just after Christmas, after experiencing headaches and loss of function in one leg for about two weeks.

On Monday afternoon he spoke openly about the experience, as his wife Yvonne drove him to Canberra Hospital from their Belowra farm.

He shared his fear of dying and leaving his family alone, but said now was no time to quit. 

“By a day or two after Christmas, I was losing mobility and brain function,” he said.

“I have been on steroids since then, trying to claw back some capacity so they can see how much of that matter they can remove and give me what time they can.

“The first few days are really shattering. They hit you with everything that is disastrous. I walked in not totally able, but within two days they have told you, you have, most likely, a very short time frame of life.”

Mr Thomson said they showed him a picture of the tumour that had consumed a large part of his brain. 

“There are an awful lot of things you have to come to grips with quickly: your own vulnerability and what is going to happen to your family when you are not there. All the things you love, my family and my farm, the other things that have played a big part: local government, surf life saving,” he said.

“All those things are you and that has been me for the past 67 years. 

“Suddenly, you start to weigh up all those things and think, ‘okay, I may not be a player in the foreseeable future, but I have had a great chance anyway’.”

Mr Thomson said his sons, James and Brendan, had been rocks.

“We are a very close-knit family. Apart from your own grief, you realise you are leaving people who love you dearly,” he said.

“That is a comfort, but it also hurts. You want to be there, with them, forever. 

“You don’t see them having a life where you are not sitting around the dinner table with them, but that does happen in this universe.

“I am not surrendering yet. I do not know whether I get a month, six months, but I am going to enjoy every day.”

He said his public service had “repaid me manyfold”.

“I have made the most wonderful friends,” he said.

“Local government, in the past five or six years, has been extraordinary. 

“I cannot sing enough praise for the community of the Eurobodalla. We live in a community that is just awesome and I will do whatever I can to ensure that whatever I leave behind is a legacy that enhances and embraces the community we love.”

Mr Thomson said the worst outcome of yesterday’s surgery would be that “Yvonne and my boys will make decisions if something does not go as we planned”.

“The best scenario is that they (surgeons) will take away as much of the tumour as they can and I will have some good time,” he said.

“If that good time turns out to be way better than I thought a week ago, well, we will take it, mate. Every day will be a winner.

“They knew immediately from the first scan that I was in big trouble.

“There was a growth that had grown quite substantially within a matter of months. I can only presume they are talking about a malignant tumour, so you add those things in and they are not good scenarios.”

Meanwhile, an emailed discussion of his illness, noticeably short on compassion, has caused anger among some of Mr Thomson’s colleagues.

One political critic reacted to the news with the comment: “I feel a council by-election coming on”, prompting another to estimate the cost of such a poll.

Mr Thomson brushed off the comments.

“It probably was not in the best of taste by a certain person, but that is the life that goes on out there,” he said.

“To everyone in the shire, in our community, it has been a most extraordinary privilege to represent them at local government level and it is not my intention yet to relinquish that role. While ever I can contribute I will, but if I can’t I will bow out gracefully. I love them dearly and it has been fantastic.”