MT ELIZA resident Doug Phayer has bravely recounted his harrowing skin cancer journey through a new documentary which explores Australia’s confronting relationship with the sun.
Over the course of two decades, Phayer, 70, faced a series of terrifying diagnoses and treatments that ultimately brought him to the brink of death. In the documentary titled Conquering Skin Cancer, Phayer opens up about the toll the disease has taken on his body, describing a journey fraught with pain, uncertainty, and fear.
Phayer spent most of his life fishing and was employed as a marine contractor which exposed him to dangerous UV levels. Eighteen years ago, he had his first basal cell carcinoma (BCC), the most common type of skin cancer, removed. He later developed squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) which progressed to five melanomas being removed. But it was the SCCs he said that were “out of control”, which led to half his left face, saliva glands, lymph nodes, part of his jaw, and back of head removed and replaced with skin from the top section of his leg.
“It just completely devastated me,” the grandfather of four said. “I went back to see all these professors for a post-op meeting, and they looked at me and said, ‘we can’t keep up with the skin cancers I’m afraid; you’re going to have to get your affairs in order, we believe you’ve only got a couple of months.”
But a breakthrough came when one of the doctors mentioned an immunotherapy trial at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, which essentially harnessed the body’s immune system to fight the cancer. “That was absolutely fantastic; that’s what saved my life,” he said. “It retrained my body to hunt down the contributing factors and removed their camouflage.” “Two years down the track, I had a PET (positron emission tomography) scan, and they said there’s no skin cancer in your system now and since then I’ve had nothing.”
Phayer hopes his story will raise awareness about skin cancer; a preventable disease which kills one person every four minutes. “Don’t go out there and be a tough bloke and just say, ‘oh, it’s only a bit of sunburn, I’ll be fine’. Because every time you get burnt, you’re creating a nest for skin cancers,” he said.
The documentary features Hugh Jackman, Cate Campbell (Olympic Champion), Deborah Hutton, Costa Giorgiadis, Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholomew (Surf Champion), and Australians of the Year Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer. It screens as cinemas in 35 locations across the country including Village Cinemas Karingal.
First published in the Frankston Times – 10 December 2024
