Jum Wallner

I moved into criminal law and I really enjoyed that, but I'd done sort of stuff at uni, reviews and whatnot.

And then a friend of mine said, I'm going down to see a comedian friend of mine, a flatmate.

Do you want to come?

His name's Peter Burnham.

And I said, yeah.

And I went, I went to the Harold Park Hotel.

It would have been 1990, I think, and saw the open mic section and just like a lightning bolt thought that's something I got to do.

And that's the moment my life changed.

We started doing these Zooms, just a few of us from college, as a lot of people did during COVID, just to pretend we had some semblance of a social life.

And then...

A mutual friend, a guy, Loco, a very close friend of both of us, who's a doctor, he rang me and told me that it had begun, Jum had got a, he liked playing golf, he'd got a pain in the backswing, just a little, and he thought it was a muscle thing, and he went to a physio, and after a couple of trips to the physio, the physio suggested he should go to the GP.

GP did scans, more scans, and I think that's when he started remembering he grew up in a

asbestos-filled Mr. Fluffy House.

And soon after, he got diagnosed with mesothelioma, fatal incurable, average lifespan after diagnosis, 11 months.

And that's when me and lots of other people soon after found out.

It was kind of a bit more incremental than that.

It's looking bad.

You know, the big thing with mesothelioma is that a small percentage, around 5%, are eligible for an operation if you get it early enough.

And if you're eligible for the operation, it's a big operation.

It might cut out a lung and some lung lining and some more stuff.