Cancer Council NSW commissioned Stephen Dupont to capture this poignant and emotive body of work for ‘Every Cancer Story Should Be Heard’, a campaign aimed at generating conversation and uniting the voices of those who live with cancer. Dupont had the privilege of meeting and photographing 10 individuals whose lives have been impacted by the disease. His brief was to capture the raw human emotion – be it a story of grief and loss or for some, the joy of overcoming cancer.  The honest, dignified and respectful portraits, accompanied by their stories capture the pain, but also the hope, the love of life and the beauty of the person with the illness. 

Mick Organ from North Haven, on the mid North Coast of NSW, gave up smoking after 20 years. Then he found out he had kidney cancer. 

"When I was 36 years old I found my dad dead in bed with a cigarette in his hand, burnt all the way down to his fingers. I remember it clearly - it was on the 12th of November 1998, about half past eight in the morning. I reached down and picked up the last two cigarettes in the pack he had, and I smoked them one at a time while I rang the police.

He died of respiratory failure but that didn’t stop me smoking. I went on for another 12 months until I met this bloke, Noel. Great bloke. He told me what a wonderful life he had for 20 odd years. Never drank or gambled, but he was yellow from smoking. And I thought, “My God, I’m going to look like that.” He got me on to one thought I always remembered: just for today I can do anything. And using that thought, I quit. Like a lot of ex-smokers I turned into the anti-smoking police. I even got caps and hats made up and a sign made up on my office: “Do not enter if you’re thinking about having a cigarette, going to have a cigarette or just had a cigarette, because you will smell like s*%t.”

I thought I was in the clear, until I was at the pub one night about 15 years later. There was this big open fire and I said to my wife, I’ve got a cold back. I thought I’d just picked up a little chill. There was this little guy sitting next to the open fire and I basically went and shifted him out of the way, and stuck my ass in the fire. I offered to buy him a beer for my rudeness. 

Then when we went out to the car park I got this mad pain in the pecker. Felt exactly like when you’re a little boy and you get your willy caught in your fly. Took me back! Anyway I got home and went to the toilet and it was like a two litre bottle of tomato sauce opened up. Went all over the urinary bowl, all on the walls. It was like watching something out of a nightmare, you know?
Being a typical male and coward I yelled out to the wife, “we’re in trouble here!”

Off to the hospital and the doctor did some tests - he was a little bloke, like a mad professor. Bow-tie was bigger than his head. And he told me, “Mate. Big fella. You’ve got a gut full of cancer.”  Next thing he said, “Mate, you smoked, didn’t you?” I hadn’t had one for 12 years but yes, I told him, I’d been a smoker for 20 years. There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that smoking caused it. Kidney cancer.

Long story short they went in and got it out. A normal kidney weighs 600g, with the cancer mine was 3.1kg. They had to make a bigger cut than they thought they would but I didn’t mind. It’s not like I’m a fashion model from Paris, am I? I’ve got to have chest X-rays every six months because they know people with renal cancer have a higher chance of getting lung cancer. If they keep an eye on me they can get it early. Which is fine by me - means I can live longer talking to people about the benefits of not smoking.

The worst thing I ever did in my life was starting smoking, and the best thing I ever did was stop. My little daughter was only five when I gave up and suddenly she was much more cuddly with her dad. I asked, “How come you love Dad now?” And she said, “You don’t stink anymore.” Makes you go ‘wow’. These days when I think about smoking, I think about what my friend Noel used to say: “If you want to have a cigarette, don’t put it in your gob. Put it in your ear instead.”