Charlotte Varcoe
THE wheels will turn for a Mount Gambier man who will travel the 450km trip to Adelaide in a wheelchair.
Cancer survivor Alec Hamilton will be joined by his sons on the journey to the big city later this month, raising funds and awareness for prostate cancer, after surviving the disease himself.
Upon his arrival in Adelaide, he will attend the Let’s Go Caravan Camping Show in early February.
“The idea came about when I told my son, Keith, that I wanted to go to the camping show,” Mr Hamilton said.
“He joked about how they would need to push me around in a wheelchair by the time we got there and we sort of just ran with it from there.”
Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2018, Mr Hamilton said he discovered the cancer in its early stages.
“I am a diabetic and because of that I have tests every three months,” Mr Hamilton said.
“One month my doctor said I should get my prostate checked at the same time, and for several years I was fine, then one year my blood count for the disease had doubled.”
Following a biopsy taken in Adelaide, Mr Hamilton was soon diagnosed with aggressive stage one prostate cancer.
“Typically men are tested every year for their prostate, and if that were the case for me, then it would have been too late,” he said.
“I was given the option to either have it removed or try radiotherapy and I decided to get it removed because I didn’t want to go through therapy and have the possibility of it not working.”
Considering himself lucky, Mr Hamilton has since devoted his time to raising funds and awareness for the disease through the Limestone Coast Prostate Cancer Support Group.
“The best thing about having the support group is that we are each other’s biggest supporters,” he said.
“We get guys who have recently been diagnosed and want to know what their options are and we can have more than 12 men sitting around the table at a time, all who have different stories to tell.”
Half of the money raised from the event will be donated to the local support group with the other half donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.
Last year, Mr Hamiton and his fellow support group members helped raise funds for a transperineal biopsy machine for the Mount Gambier and District Hospital.
Mr Hamilton is due to leave Mount Gambier next Friday.
