Every patient that gets the all-clear from the cancer wing of the Prince of Wales hospital rings a golden bell. On Friday, Tommy Raudonikis, rugby league legend, maverick and former smoker of 100 cigarettes per day, rang that bell.
Five weeks ago Raudonikis entered the cancer wing to treat the vocal cord cancer that had invaded his throat, 15 years after he had given up smoking.
"I've always had a bit of a rough voice," said Raudonikis with a rasp every Wests fan would recognise from the sidelines of Campbelltown Stadium. "I was a guest speaker up in Cairns and even I thought I was a bit huskier than usual, the next day I could hardly talk."
The prognosis was not good, Raudonikis required weeks of radiation therapy, but if anyone was going to get through this battle, it was the halfback from Cowra - he'd already put four heart bypasses in the bag.
He called good mate John Singleton for advice and ended up with one of Australia's leading radiation oncologists Robert Smee at the Nelune comprehensive cancer centre in Randwick.
The $80 million underground centre run by the Prince of Wales hospital opened in November. It has four state-of-the-art radiotherapy bunkers, three of them named after Sydney beaches, so called because their walls are plastered with the sandy panoramas of Tamarama, Maroubra and Coogee.
"Coogee is my favourite," said Raudonikis. "But it would have been better if they had have called it Lidcombe. I don't like that silvertail shit, I like the battlers."
Coogee, the radiotherapy bunker, is one hell of a battler.
In and out of its aqua marine walls walks a steady stream of radiologists, doctors and patients in the depths of their struggles with brain tumours, throat cancer or melanoma. Heartbreakingly, posters, blue and red, with the names of children line a hallway, each mermaid or "Lightning McQueen" car sticker marks a day they have survived in the ward.
But neither the children nor Raudonikis are confined to the dark basement-bound radiation departments of yesteryear, so buried to protect those not undergoing treatment.
At Nelune the light floods in. It changes people, said Raudonikis.
"You become part of the family here, everyone has a problem, for many it's the most daunting one they've ever faced. When you ring that bell, you're not only getting the all-clear, you're also leaving behind the people who helped save your life and those that went through it all with you. I just want to give back as much as I can, places like this can never have enough help."
If there is anyone as relieved as the former Australian captain it is his partner, Trish Brown. "It's amazing, you'd think after having vocal cord cancer he might not chat as much. But no one is going to stop that man from talking."
