SAM NEILL TALKED ABOUT HIS CURRENT CONDITION WITH HIS STAGE THREE CANCER DIAGNOSIS
76-year-old star actor, had talked about his current health and mind status, regarding his diagnosis with stage three blood cancer, to Australian Story.
“I didn’t know really how long I had to live,” Sam Neill had said.
“And I thought yeah, I should probably write something down for my children and my grandchildren because I may not be here in a couple of months and it would be good for them to have a sense of me and and some of the things that I’ve done.”
He added that he is on a new experimental treatment, as his chemo treatment had failed to work.
He stated that he is aware of his status and condition, and know that he won’t last long. He stated that he is “prepared” if the treatment might stop working.
“I’m not in any way frightened of dying. That doesn’t worry me. It’s never worried me from the beginning, but I would be annoyed,” Neill had stated.
“I’d be annoyed because there are things I still want to do. Very irritating, dying. But I’m not afraid of it.” Neill had said.
“Because I’d really like another decade or two, you know? We’ve built all these lovely terraces, we’ve got these olive trees and cypresses, and I want to be around to see it all mature. And I’ve got my lovely little grandchildren. I want to see them get big. But as for the dying? I couldn’t care less.”
His son, Tim had stated that, “When he hung the phone up and we sat down, and we had a little bit of a cry together. It was supposed to be a happy day. He didn’t get to stay,”
“I was in really a fight for my life. And everything was a new world and a rather alarming world.” Sam added.
“I had three or four months of reasonably conventional chemotherapies which are, brutal.”
“I was shocked, and I broke down and I could barely hug him. He was just, you know, bones and skin. And then he was giving me a hard time for being upset about it and saying I was stressing him out, but I was going, “What are you talking about, Dad?””
“I know I’ve got it, but I’m not really interested in it. It’s out of my control. If you can’t control it, don’t get into it” he stated about his awareness on his condition.
He described his treatment sessions as, ”very grim and depressing.”
“The thing is, I’m crook. I may have to speed this up. I found myself with nothing to do.” Sam Neill had said to The Guardian.
“And I’m used to working. I love working. I love going to work. I love being with people every day and enjoying human company and friendship and all these things. And suddenly I was deprived of that. And I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’”
“I thought I need to do something, and I thought, “Shall I start writing?”” he stated about his book.
“I didn’t think I had a book in me, I just thought I’d write some stories. And I found it increasingly engrossing.”
“A year later, not only have I written the book – I didn’t have a ghostwriter – but it’s come out in record time,”
“But as I went on and kept writing, I realised it was actually sort of giving me a reason to live and I would go to bed thinking, “I’ll write about that tomorrow… that will entertain me.”” He added.
“And so it was a lifesaver really, because I couldn’t have gone through that with nothing to do, you know.”
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