Giving back: why Walter wanted to say thank you by volunteering.

When Walter Jarvis noticed something felt different about his body in 2021, just after his second bout of COVID, he never would have imagined the fatigue and vertigo he was feeling would end in a bowel cancer diagnosis and an eventual decision to become a hospital volunteer.

Walter’s four-year journey started with an ultrasound, at the direction of his GP, when he couldn’t pin down what was causing his symptoms, that ultrasound picked up gallbladder polyps. A discovery Walter now calls one of the sliding doors moments of his story.

“If that didn’t happen, my whole cancer story just doesn’t happen,” Walter explained.

A surgeon reviewed the scan and decided not to proceed. Walter’s GP practice then stopped bulk billing, and for two years he saw a rotating cast of doctors, presenting again and again with fatigue, bloating and gastrointestinal pain, and loss of tolerance for foods he’d always been able to eat.

“They did everything except a stool sample, which had that been done would’ve picked up the cancer earlier,” Walter said.

In 2023, a letter about the gallbladder issue arrived out of the blue, a letter about a two-year waiting list he didn’t know he was on. That’s how Walter came to have a colonoscopy in early 2025, one he almost didn’t think was worth doing, still certain the answer was some kind of food intolerance. Before the procedure he mentioned to the performing surgeon that his bowel prep hadn’t come out quite right, despite following every instruction. That honesty made all the difference because that highlighted to the surgeon the need to push on with the scope regardless, and cancer was found in his splenic flexure.

Diagnosed on 27 February 2025, Walter had surgery within weeks, at Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, proceeded by an urgent trip to the hospital’s emergency department doubled over in pain and an admittance to the wards. He eventually got into theatre a few days later where a subtotal colectomy was performed, where 70 per cent of his bowel was removed. Pathology later showed tumour deposits despite clear lymph nodes, upgrading Walter from a hoped-for stage two to stage three diagnosis.

As he resides on Brisbane’s south side, Walter’s care moved to Metro South Health and the PA Hospital, before being moved to the new Eight Mile Plains Satellite Hospital, where he began six months of chemotherapy under the care of oncologist Dr Catherine Berman. It’s Dr Berman, and the way she treated him, that Walter comes back to again and again when he talks about his journey.

“She treated me as an individual, not as a patient,” Walter said.

When neuropathy set in from the chemo drug oxaliplatin, Dr Berman didn’t tell Walter what to do. She laid out the data and let him decide, reducing his dose and eventually supporting him to stop that particular drug altogether after the fifth round, once he could see no real benefit in pushing on.

“I’m not you, but here’s the data,” Walter recalled her saying.

Walter was so grateful for that care he gave Dr Berman a thank you card. And when he confessed to her that he’d slipped back into old habits after months of hyper-focusing on his diet, braced for the same kind of lecture he’d had from GPs throughout his journey, she said something that has stayed with him.

“You’ve been through a lot, give yourself some grace,” Walter said. “It just meant a lot.”

Walter finished chemotherapy at Eight Mile Plains in October 2025 and was discharged from Dr Berman’s care with no evidence of disease at his December scan, news he holds carefully, aware of the imposter syndrome that comes with meeting others through Bowel Cancer Australia who have faced far longer and harder roads with the disease.

Diagnosed at just 42, Walter is also acutely conscious of how easily his cancer could have been missed and now channels that awareness into advocating for earlier detection of bowel cancer in younger patients.

But it’s the care he received at PA, including a short stint in emergency with a bad case of influenza and at Eight Mile Plains, being treated as a person and not just a diagnosis, that brought Walter to volunteering at PA Hospital as his way of saying thank you.

“I just felt respected by the nurses and doctors, and I’ve got some time off that I could do this to give back,” Walter said.

You can support patients like Walter under the care of PA Hospital’s incredible staff by making the Foundation your place to give here.

If you’re interested in volunteering at the PA, you can start the process here.