I never In fact, I never intended to become an advocate, a public speaker, or a participant in one of Australia’s most significant healthcare debates. Like many women of my generation, my life revolved around family, work and caring for others. I spent more than twenty years as a registered nurse.

Then, in 2010, our youngest son Dan was diagnosed with stage IV bowel cancer at just twenty years of age. Everything changed. What followed was a journey no parent expects to take.

It is only after a decade of journey that I have realised that this book is about how we decide what truth looks like in medicine. Not in a philosophical sense but in practicality.

People keep insisting on Evidence-Based Medicine, but I think a more humane approach would be to argue for Evidence-informed compassion or perhaps Compassion informed evidence.

When Dan asked me to “Fill it with Truth” I don’t think he was asking me to prove anything, he was asking me to bear witness.

That is a very different thing.

Over fifteen years I have witnessed: patients getting better, families finding hope, doctors changing their minds, governments changing laws, researchers uncovering new science, and, yes, systems sometimes failing the very people they exist to help.

My role has never been to claim certainty.

It’s been to say: