One in a million

By Private John Wellfare

The thrill of a lifetime for a loving father.

“Enjoying the view, Dad?” – Allan Gravelle during the flight.

Allan Gravelle straps into the PC-9 cockpit under his son’s supervision.

Photo by PTE John Wellfare

ALMOST 10 years after being told he would never fly again, qualified flying instructor Flight Lieutenant David Gravelle finally had the chance to thank the man who saved his career as a pilot – his father.

On October 12, Flight Lieutenant Gravelle took his father, Allan, over Perth in a No. 2 Flying Training School PC-9 for an insider’s look at what he does for a living.

Diagnosed with cancer at 23 years of age, in November 1996 – two weeks after he’d posted into No. 35 Squadron as a pilot straight out of operational conversion training – Flight Lieutenant Gravelle spent 12 months enduring a bombardment of medical procedures, examinations and hospital stays.

The type of cancer, an embryonal carcinoma, was an aggressive form of the disease and, before about 15 years ago, often fatal.

At the time Flight Lieutenant Gravelle was diagnosed, accepted treatment practices had about an 80 per cent success rate, provided the cancer was detected early.

When it comes to cancer, the treatment is only slightly less horrible than the disease itself. After surgery failed to remove all of the cancer, Flight Lieutenant Gravelle’s oncologist told him he would begin chemotherapy in five days and, as an aside, that he would never fly again.

The obstacle to flying came in the form of the anti-tumour antibiotic Bleomycin, part of the standard chemotherapy regime.

The treatment would leave scar tissue in Flight Lieutenant Gravelle’s lungs and prevent him from being medically fit to breathe pressurised oxygen, thus grounding his career as a pilot just as it had barely begun.

“Being told you have cancer is kind of surreal,” he said. “Because I didn’t feel sick at all, I just had to believe that what the people were telling me was true.

“The oncologist was looking at it purely medically and he had no concept of – it sounds a bit tacky, but – the passion I had for flying, so it didn’t actually occur to him to tell me [of the side-effects] when we first met and started talking about chemotherapy.

We talked about the drugs and what would happen and what was required, but he didn’t mention at all that it was going to stop me from flying.

“Then he rang my boss and said, ‘by the way, he’s never going to fly again’.”

But Flight Lieutenant Gravelle’s flying career didn’t end in 1997. With the days until the beginning of his chemotherapy regime quickly counting down, his father, Allan, hit the Internet and started researching the disease and treatment protocols.

“We started researching because, well, we knew nothing about cancer,” Mr Gravelle said.

“So [it was] just to educate ourselves basically – to find out what was going on and what was in store.
“Cancer’s such a terrible word and when you first hear it you can’t actually say it; you just can’t believe that it’s actually happening.

“Then we learnt that the cancer he had was very treatable and had a very high success rate and so we could see a light at the end of the tunnel. But when we found out that the chemo he was going to have would stop his career dead, it was like the light had gone out.”

In his research, Mr Gravelle learnt of a Dublin fireman, who’d suffered the same disease as his son, but had recovered and gone back to his career as a fireman.

“It occurred to me that, being a fireman, the guy would need to breathe pressurised oxygen,” he said. “So we followed that up and, with the help of the Air Force doctor, who was also very supportive, we discovered there was a secondary regime of chemotherapy, which is normally what they call the recovery regime – to be used if the first one wasn’t fully successful.”

Through the Senior Medical Officer, Flight Lieutenant Gravelle pressed his case to have the chemotherapy regime changed and, at the 11th hour, was successful.

“It got to the stage where I had the first drip in my arm, ready to start the treatment, when they agreed to switch,” Flight Lieutenant Gravelle said.

Despite the win, a happy ending was still a long way away. The alternative chemotherapy regime is the secondary option for a reason – it’s a much more potent version of the notoriously painful treatment.

In and out of hospital throughout 1997, Flight Lieutenant Gravelle’s immune system failed twice because of the chemotherapy. But when asked recently if it was hard to decide between taking the more potent treatment regime and never flying again, he replied “no, not at all”.

“It meant I spent a lot longer in hospital,” he said. “I don’t know how long I would have been sick on the other treatment, but I was fairly sick.

“It was almost 12 months to the day out of flying, but the first time back in the airplane it was suddenly worthwhile.”

But this isn’t a story about Flight Lieutenant Gravelle’s cancer, nor is it a story about his recovery or the fact that he was able to continue flying, or that he now has two daughters and is an instructor at No. 2 Flying Training School; this is a story about how he thanked his father for saving his flying career.

There’s plenty of red tape to cut through before gaining approval to take a civilian up in a military aircraft, but Flight Lieutenant Gravelle justified his request on the basis that his father had “contributed to Air Force capability” by helping to retain a fully trained pilot.

After a medical check and a safety brief, Mr Gravelle was suited up and took to the skies over Perth with his son in the pilot’s seat. He described the flight as “the thrill of a lifetime”.

“It’s given me a bit of an insight into why David was so keen,” he said. “After he’d experienced flying and done the flying training, the blow would have been unbearable if he’d been unable to continue flying.”

Flight Lieutenant Gravelle took his father for a circuit around Perth’s picturesque Rottnest Island and over the city, then for some aerobatics over the RAAF Base Pearce test area. It’s a one-in-a-million experience that no chartered civilian flight could replicate – something Flight Lieutenant Gravelle would himself have never experienced again were it not for his father.

As for the cancer – it went into remission after the chemotherapy and Flight Lieutenant Gravelle has annual checks to ensure it hasn’t returned.

Although most pilots would love the opportunity to show their parents what they do for a living first hand, the Gravelle family certainly earned the right.

As Flight Lieutenant Gravelle said, “it’s a really good way of saying thanks”.

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