Fighting for my life’
Stan screens at 8.30pm tonight on Three. Walker’s new EP, Stan, will be available to download from 8pm. normally again.
‘‘After the surgery, I felt like shit. I felt like my body was one big, swollen wound. I just remember it was the worst time in my life. The pain, the breathing, no eating, just laying there like a vegetable. I looked like a big spud.
‘‘They found 13 spots of cancer in my stomach. If I hadn’t got it out, well, our cancer spreads so quick, that right now I’d either be dead or on my way out. Long term, I have to have injections of vitamin B12 every three months – I’ll die without it, because that’s how our bodies make blood. But I am cancer free, I’m just like everybody else.
‘‘Still now, I’m still learning but I’m a lot more weary and conscious – I just want to live. I’ve been in hospital too many times and I’ve sat there, as I’m about to die. I’ve thought to myself, this is how I’m going to go.’’
Complications including a collapsed lung and a ‘‘leak’’ in the connection between the small intestine and oesophagus meant Walker had to be on an IV ‘‘straight to my heart’’ for 23 hours a day for a fortnight and then he was ‘‘stuck inside’’ for six weeks.
‘‘At home, I started to get a fever, to feel sick, my bones were aching. I went from my normal colour, to pure white. I watched the blood just go out of my arms,’’ he says.
‘‘Mum was in the lounge, but everything seized up. My neck, my jaw, I couldn’t yell. I was freezing and everything hurt. I couldn’t call out, and I thought, ‘yes, this is how I’m going to die’. My phone was on my chest, and I pressed Mum’s number and she came running in.
‘‘I saw her face when she looked at me – she said I looked dead. I was just fighting. Just breathe, just breathe.
‘‘Throughout my life, I’ve wanted to die so many times. I tried to commit suicide when I was a kid and even as an adult, things get too overwhelming. That’s why I like talking about that stuff – people think it just ends when you get successful, but it just gets worse. You’re an adult now, you’re more developed, there’s more pressure, you know more things and you get overwhelmed by things. But thinking about the number of times I wanted to be right there in that position, in the moment, when I almost died, now, I was fighting for my life.’’
Then earlier this year, while Walker was rehearsing for January’s One Love festival in Tauranga, his body ‘‘shut down’’ again.
‘‘Next minute, I’m in hospital again. After a day, they wanted to do emergency surgery, for an infected gallbladder, but I said ‘no, tonight I have a dinner with the Prime Minister’,’’ he says.
‘‘So that whole thing, that Jacinda Ardern was talking about on Instagram, had nothing to do with cancer – I told her I had gallstones. There was assumption after assumption. And the assumptions were wrong.
‘‘I was on all the drugs, my antibiotics, and the next day I had to go and do One Love. I felt good, I was being really careful.’’
The battle has taken its toll on Walker, who’s gone from 102 kg down to 67 kg, and who feared he might lose his singing voice.
‘‘If my voice didn’t come back, I thought I’m done. I’m over it. I’m done trying with this life. That’s my purpose. I don’t know what I would do, or who I would be, if I couldn’t do the one thing I love doing. My gift.’’
But now he’s telling his story in tonight’s documentary on Three as a way to show he can open up about himself – even while he’s going through the pain.
‘‘When I’m around people, I make sure they know nothing. I go home, and I just die. I am exhausted physically, mentally, everything. I don’t want people feeling sorry for me, or acting like I can’t do anything. I have the people that do know, watching me. And now, I say no [to bad decisions]. I want to live. I want to be healthy. I don’t want another operation. I don’t want to get down to my last bone and feel weak.’’
It’s all part of Walker’s realisation that his cancer battle – and everything that’s gone with it – has made him ‘‘way different’’.
‘‘I’ve come into a new season of change – not just because of this. For two years, it was a fullon drought, in my spirit, everything. I lost the joy for everything I love, singing, relationships, family, all of it,’’ he says.
‘‘In 2016, it was to the point where I couldn’t control my mind. I just thought I was going crazy in my head – I wouldn’t let anyone see that though. I just hated the world, hated everything. I had no control over my feelings. I just felt like, ugh, I’m done. Done with everything.
‘‘It was an encounter that I had with God [that got me out of it], things reminding me who I am, and what my purpose is. Reminders that the sun’s still there, despite the rain and hail.
‘‘All of this is part of it, just in a different way. Last year was the worst and the best. It was the death of so many things, but when death comes, there is always new life.
‘‘I want to do what I want to do and I want to do it well. I’m so competitive and motivated, that no one is going to stop me. I’m not going to sit there and wait for people to do things for me. It’s on me now. Life is way too short. You. Could. Die.’’