Roy Austen is raising money for his funeral costs and his son's future

The 63-year-old single father is doing everything he can to raise funds for his boy Codie-James and their two ragdoll cats Fluffy and Gizmo. He set up a GoFundMe campaign following the terminal diagnosis, which has so far raised nearly $5000.

But Mr Austen also had an important message, especially for men who might be feeling “a little off”.

“Guys are funny. We don’t like going to the doctor. I put it off and put it off, and, because CJs birthday is a little more than a week before Christmas, I was saving for that, and a doctor visit means money. So I put it off even longer.

“If you’re feeling anything, don’t put it off.”

Mr Austen is a passionate photographer, and spent 40 years in the industry in Launceston.

He started to notice a reaction to certain foods about two years ago. It was suggested that he had eosinophilic oesophagitis, which was an inflammatory condition of the oesophagus.

“Over the next 18 months, it continued to worsen with me ending up on a liquid diet to survive, and in the process, I lost a huge amount of weight. We discovered that some others had been helped by a dose of daily probiotics, so we tried that and slowly I was able to start eating some of those foods again.

“This continued until about two months ago, when I started having quite a lot of pain in my left side and abdomen, and lumps began to appear. I thought it may have been kidney stones.”

As a single parent, Mr Austen was on a Newstart allowance, with limited funds and no savings.

“As I had been getting steadily worse over the year, I was becoming quite concerned for my health and decided I was going to try and make this Christmas and birthday the best one CJ had ever had, saving every dollar I could for the entire 12 months.”

When he did go to the doctor, a CT scan was ordered straight away, and Mr Austen found out he had cancer that had spread right throughout his body. The main site of the cancer was where the oesophagus meets the stomach.

“As it stands, the doctor has given me less than a year to live, but I’m losing weight too fast and I think it will be sooner rather than later.

“Obviously my medical expenses and funeral costs will need to be paid for somehow and the part I don’t want to think about, but must, is the ongoing care of CJ. This is devastating for me, but I am doing everything in my power to try and create the best future possible for my boy, while I am still able to.”