Reg Hickey got a nasty insect bite on his leg while gardening one day, which led him to seek medical help and, ultimately, discover he had cancer at the age of 66.

The bite had nothing to do with it.

In fact, Reg had zero symptoms that suggested he was sick.

The Shepparton-born father of two had been back in the Goulburn Valley for eight years after living in Melbourne for 30 and was so healthy he hadn’t yet needed to find himself a new local GP.

When his leg swelled up that day, he was prompted to visit a clinic.

Soon after, some routine blood tests alerted a second doctor to something being not quite right.

It took months and multiple further blood tests, doctors’ appointments and a couple of trips to Melbourne for PET scans before the words ‘prostate cancer’ were dropped.

That was in March 2025.

“They said, we know you’ve got prostate cancer, but we know it’s more problematic than that; we’re pretty sure it’s escaped,” Reg recalled.

“I kept getting told, ‘you’re young’ — I laughed at that, ‘you’re healthy,’ — I laughed at that, ‘there’s no present symptoms in any aspect of your life’.

“So, I was quite taken aback when they told me I had cancer.”

The cancer had spread from his prostate to his hip and was still on the move and all of a sudden he was a high-risk cancer patient with a team of 12 specialists at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne discussing the best plan of attack to save his life.

“You’re outside the glass jar looking in, people are talking to you about you,” Reg said.

“I felt, reflectively, I didn’t really grasp what was going on, it was just, okay, let’s get on with it, it’s sort of the person I am.”

The Melbourne cohort and many local specialists at GV Health came to a unanimous decision that it was best for Reg to have his prostate removed; a confronting outlook for a 66-year-old man who’d never before had surgery.

But Reg put his trust in his team and was whisked into theatre at St Vincent’s in May last year, where five doctors sat at different positions around a robotic machine, controlling its arms to perform the surgery.

“They’re wheeling me in and here’s this massive overlaying piece of technology with arms and everything going everywhere, looked like it was going to pick a fruit tree,” he said.

“I was on the edge of the jar, just looking in thinking, well this is it. I’m fairly pragmatic at the best of times I hope, and along for the ride I went.”

He had a short stay in Melbourne before returning to Shepparton for a three-month recovery before radiation could begin on his hip.

All up, he had to take six months off from his workplace, Watters Electrical, where he works as a business development manager.

More than a year post-surgery and now with a cocktail of 14 prescription pills he takes to manage the cancer each day, he still only has the energy to work around three days a week. And then there is the financial side: four of those pills — the main cancer ones — cost $5000 each month.

The other pills are an entree and dessert to counter the side effects of the main course medicine.

“I am very lucky to work for a great employers because the financial burden is significant as well,” Reg said.

“Ultimately someone’s got to pay and it’s you, but they have employee insurance schemes and all that sort of stuff, so it’s enabled me to not have the financial pressure, which would probably be worse than the medical pressure.”

Reg is doing much better now his meds are balanced.

He will speak on a panel at this year’s Biggest Ever Blokes Lunch in Shepparton on Friday, August 21.

But it’s only now that the worst of his ordeal is behind him that the private man is happy to share.

He kept the early part of his journey quiet, only sharing with a couple of mates and his partner, Marion.

“It’s no good crying wolf, I’ve got two beautiful daughters, I’m not going to tell them that I think I’m sick until I know I’m sick and I know what’s wrong with me ... I chose not even to tell my brother and sisters,” Reg said.

“I chose to just leave it to myself and my partner to manage and then after it I thought I’ll wait until I’m recovered because I’m not looking for sympathy or anything like that.”

Aware that he’ll open himself up to conversation now, he said if it helped improve cancer care locally and contributed to Shepparton getting its much-needed fully integrated cancer centre, he was happy to talk.

Having attended the cancer-fundraising lunch every year since he’s lived back in Shepparton, last year he saw it through a significantly different lens to previous years, where he’d considered the event more of an opportunity to catch up with his friends.

“It’s about a little bit more than that beer that’s sitting in front of me,” Reg said.

“The two prostate nurses, Sonia and Nicole ... I just sat back on my own for a while and they were hugging far too many blokes; you can’t be married, no disrespect, but you can’t be married and hug that many men.

“And I thought, Jesus, this is not good, there’s plenty of Regs in this room.”

He said all day there were men just like himself lining up to chat to the nurses who’d supported them through their own journeys with prostate cancer.

“This is a numbers game to a lot of people that don’t know you personally, to the doctors and the nurses, you’re number one or you’re number 75 or you’re number 200, but GV Health have made it quite a personal thing — ‘he’s Reg’ — you could see they were doing that with all of their patients,” Reg said.

“We had a few laughs along the way and I thought it was appropriate to do so (speak at this year’s event); the way they’ve treated me, the care and respect and everything, I think it’s incumbent upon me to say a little bit about my journey.”

So, what is the main message Reg wants the men in the room to hear on Friday?

“As soon as you turn 50, get your doctor to order a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test (which is a simple blood test that measures the level of a protein made by the prostate gland),” he said.

“If there is any form of prostate cancer in those tests, you’ve got a chance to get it very early; all the options are there, which might still be surgery, but it will be minor, not major, and if it’s minor, your doctor can help you live through that for the rest of your life in a really simply managed format, just like having a crook knee.

“If you turn your back on it, knowingly or not, you’re a fool. This can be really simple with some tablets and then away you go for the rest of your life.”

∎ Shepparton’s Biggest Ever Blokes Lunch will be held at the multipurpose pavilion at Shepparton Showgrounds on Friday, August 21, where guests will enjoy lunch, drinks, entertainment by keynote speaker Brendan Fevola and comedian Marty Fields, before the event concludes with a goods and services auction.

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Wednesday, 5th August 2026

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