On 10 March this year, Richard Scolyer was told he had three months to live.

“Basically, I’ve got a tumour inside my brain that’s supposedly incurable – 75 per cent of people are dead within a year,” he tells me during an interview in late June.

“I feel very lucky I’m still here.”

The battler – also 2024 Australian of the Year, a pathology specialist and co-medical director of the Melanoma Institute – is the star of a new podcast series published by Canberra Health Services (CHS), designed to “highlight our health care heroes”.

Behind the Curtain features “open and interesting conversations” with 10 professionals from across the ACT’s health care industry and there’s already talk of a second season.

Topics range from responding to car accidents and the ins and outs of organ donation to myths about breast cancer and what really happens in the hospital’s mortuary.

Richard, who came to Canberra in 1995 as a haematology registrar, stars in episode one alongside a former colleague of many years, Jane Dahlstrom, to discuss their personal experiences “facing cancer from both sides”.

His cancer, a stage-four gliobastoma, is the most aggressive form of brain cancer.

“On an X-ray you can see the central part of it, but then there’s like tree roots or octopus tentacles that go in far distant parts of your brain that not even a surgeon could see,” he explains.

In 2023, Richard agreed to delay a surgery to remove as much as possible to first try an experimental form of immunotherapy for melanomas, never before used on the brain. It prolonged his life by more than a year, with the cancer remaining at bay until March 2025.

“The fact that treatment hasn’t changed in such a long time means we need to do more – not just on prolonging distance, but finding a cure.”

Richard Scolyer and Jane Dahlstrom became best friends while working together in the Canberra Hospital’s pathology department. Photo: Canberra Health Services.

Meanwhile, Jane was diagnosed with breast cancer more than 20 years ago, in 2003.

“It’s one of those diseases that tends to rear its head again, but I’ve been really very well – I had my last surgery in 2020, and not for reoccurrence,” she says.

“I think breast cancer management has evolved enormously. We’ve made incredible strides with the kind of targeted treatment that wasn’t available 20 years ago and it just shows a lot of the work driven by people like Richard.”

Jane moved from Sydney to start her local pathology career in the old Canberra Hospital on Lake Burley Griffin in 1985. Her CV includes a PhD at the John Curtin Medical School and stints at various hospitals across Australia, but she has been working with CHS almost non-stop since 2000.

“I guess, both of us have had this experience where, as pathologists, we spend a lot of our time diagnosing cancer and giving clinicians direction as to what the next steps should be for a patient’s treatment,” she says.

“But both of us have also had our own cancer journeys … so that’s the reason for the name of the podcast.”

Podcast host Dr Sanjaya Senanayake is also known nationally and internationally for his work as a infectious diseases expert at Canberra Hospital, but also lectures at the Australian National University and the University of NSW.

He has more than 60 medical journal articles and 700 local, national and international TV interviews under his belt too.

Two years ago, he realised too many health care workers in Canberra were flying under the radar.

“To keep ticking on and doing our thing and helping people and helping the community, it involves some pretty amazing people doing wonderful things,” he says.

Behind the Curtain podcast series on Spotify. Photo: Screenshot.

“By recognizing them, it will make them feel better, make them feel more valued, make our Canberra Health Services and our ACT community realise how privileged we are to have such people with us.

“And also for people outside the ACT, interested in working in the healthcare sector, realizing what opportunities there are in Canberra.”

Each of the 10 episodes, available on all the usual podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts, are about half an hour long. And there could be more coming.

“You always wonder with a podcast, will anyone even listen? But I’ve had people in the community – not just Canberra Hospital but other hospitals as well – come up to me saying they’ve listened to the various interviews and they found them to be really inspiring,” Dr Sanjaya said.

“I’m keen to do a second season, because I think there are more wonderful people out there we can highlight.”