Meet Hazzy, The Bravest Kid In Aussie Rock

After 14 wild years together, Tassie’s most beloved band Luca Brasi will play their last show for the time being on Friday, June 27th at the Hobart UniBar – which will also serve as one of the final shows at the venue itself before its impending closure. Lead singer Tyler Richardson isn’t here to talk about that, though. Instead, he’s here to spread the word about his three-year-old son Harris – better known as Hazzy or Haz – and the ordeal that both he and his family have been through. Ahead of the band’s impending hiatus, the man lovingly known as Richo speaks openly and honestly about the near-unbearable trauma of infant cancer, and how self-advocacy lead to national change.

You can tell a lot about a person who finishes a roll of toilet paper and then replenishes the roll. I reckon you can also tell a lot about the bastards who don’t quite finish it and leave a few measly scraps so they can get out of changing it. I thought about this while I was walking out of the bathroom and read a text from my old friend DJY. Chances are you know DJY if you’ve been to a show in most of the eastern states of Australia; if you live in Sydney you definitely know him, but his effect is felt in more places than that. He’s a gig pig; a monster for live music, and even a world record holder for attending shows.

He had messaged me to speak about the beginnings of telling the story of the last few years of the lives of my family and I: Me, my wife Alix and our now-three-year-old son, Hazzy. He thought I could spew some words, unraveling some of the thread of the very messy time of these last few years, and give some insight into my frame of mind as well as the state of my band, Luca Brasi. I think I was pondering toilet paper, and wondering how this type of stuff permeates my brain at any given moment. The impact of life crashing in has resulted in me being diagnosed with PTSD and also ADHD; the latter is probably the reason I dwell on rolls of paper, let’s be honest.

I have PTSD after our aforementioned three-year-old was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. He’d been sick on and off for a couple months, and we were getting no answers – he just kept getting worse. Plenty of GPs dismissed it as a common cold or gastro – the run of the mill daycare bugs that are a constant of kids that age. The thing was, though, these things could no longer explain what the hell was happening – and why a happy little kid was now constantly so upset you couldn’t put him down. I have a video in my phone that I just can’t look at from this period. We made it to show our GP, as this poor bugger was just going through hell. Videos and photos from this time and the next couple of years are massive triggers for me, and invariably send me spiraling.

After all this lack of answers, Alix just kept pushing for help. Eventually, my own GP got us in contact with a pediatrician. He took one look at Hazzy and said to get him to emergency pronto; “post-haste” were his words. Long story short: This visit to the hospital delivered us news we had never even considered: Hazzy hand cancer. Bad cancer, too; a type of childhood cancer that is so aggressive, it is scarcely believable. From that moment on, we barely left the hospital – right up until Christmas last year – and we left our home and our lives for Melbourne. They couldn’t treat this disease here in Tassie, you see; they just aren’t set up for the specialised care that it requires.

Tyler Richardson: “Kids shouldn’t get sick, and kids shouldn’t die like that”

We began treatment immediately, starting with chemotherapy in the hope to reduce the grapefruit-sized tumour which had grown on Hazzy’s adrenal gland. I learned about anatomy, about medicines, about the hospital environment, about surgeons, about specialists and a whole heap of other shit I wish I was still oblivious too. Turns out, I have no fucking idea about a lot of things. Unfortunately, that’s just what happens; you have to learn things in order to advocate for your kid. The nurses and doctors at The Royal Children’s in Melbourne are everything to us – we owe them the world, and Hazzy is alive because of them – but you need to advocate daily in order to get what your kid needs.

We saw Hazzy slowly begin to fall apart from the chemo. We thought he was doing better than expected, but then his hair fell out and he developed mucositis – a condition just as fucking horrible as it sounds. He stopped eating, and he got his nasal gastric tube inserted to keep him alive. He had a Hickman line inserted into his tiny chest to receive the medicines which would both kill him and keep him alive. Eventually, the chemo shrunk his tumour small enough that they could more safely operate around the tangle of organs, intestines and nerves in his stomach. Surgeons are weird people – the guy who operated genuinely said that he was looking forward to such an interesting operation. I’ll never forget that. I guess you need to detach to operate on tiny babies. As much as he lacked social skills, however, he more than made up for that with his surgical acumen. He crushed it.

Hazzy came out the other side no longer having a tumour, but a goddamn shark bite-sized scar where they took his insides out to excise the tumour and then put it all back together. It’s funny, as this might seem like the end of it, but the reality is that Neuroblastoma doesn’t fuck around. It wants to come back, and we live every day with that fear – hence Hazzy’s treatment continued, and still does. We then got into high-dose chemotherapy, as well as stem cell transplants. Still, if we thought things were bad already, it was about to get a hell of a lot worse.

They use high-dose chemotherapy to flatline your bone marrow; to absolutely obliterate every cell in your body in order to stop your cells being arseholes and morphing into cancer. They can hammer kids way harder than us, as they are so young and can replicate cells so well. It showed, of course; Hazzy was in a state I can hardly believe was possible to this very day. Months upon months of living in a hospital in isolation, so that a cold or even bloody stiff breeze wouldn’t kill him. Dosed firstly on morphine, then ketamine, then hydromorphone, and then even fentanyl. I have seen Hazzy way more cooked than any goober at the club, and boy have I seen some cooked units in my time.

We kept going, and he kept fighting. More treatments, and more long hospital stays, but he just kept going. I was falling apart. Alix was, too, but she is everything I am not: Tough, resilient and the absolute foundation we are built on. The band played some shows in that time, but being away from them both killed me. I’d be crying out back, crying on stage and just about everywhere in between. It’s all just too hard. Kids shouldn’t get sick, and kids shouldn’t die like that. I saw so much death in that hospital, and things I didn’t ever think I’d see. I saw relationships fall apart; families breaking in front of my eyes while kids passed. Their tiny bodies looking impossibly sick and frail. Hell on earth.

Eventually, Hazzy got through his protocol. We were doing less gnarly stuff, but it wasn’t the end. Around this time, we had heard about a drug in the US that could be used after major treatment to try and keep Neuroblastoma away. It came, however, with going to the US for trials – and, crucially, putting an immunocompromised kid through endless and dangerous travel.

Not to mention the cost associated with doing all of this. We’d had mates set up a GoFundMe for us early on when they found out about Hazzy, and it was the most humbling experience imaginable, but that money was running out. We simply couldn’t afford it, and it would require even more fundraising. I didn’t think this was good enough for kids to deal with, and so I started leaning on anyone I could for some contacts in government to try and push to have it accessible in Australia.

Somehow, it worked. Hazzy and his pals could access this drug here at home, and fight this hell on home soil. On Christmas Eve last year, Hazzy was given the all clear and we got to come home to Tassie. We walked into our house after 20-odd months and all looked at each other, wondering what the hell had just happened.

The Richardsons On A Current Affair

It’s weird to just try to begin your life again after experiencing all this, but we’re trying. I’m back teaching full-time, and Alix and Hazzy are at home – or better yet, out and about and living life again. As for the band, it’s honestly been an afterthought. During all this, our guitarist Pat had left the band and we’d gained a new member: our old mate Nick, from heaps of great bands like Raging Hormones, Bodyjar and The Sinking Teeth. But it’s all different now. I just want to be present – to be home with my family, and to attempt to make the most of each day we have together.

I finally felt like playing again, and I’ve been doing some solo touring, but it’s hard to be away. In more recent times, we have been jamming as a band again and fucking hell it feels good. Sometimes you get so wrapped up in bullshit like accounting and contracts and politics – all the business stuff, really – and you forget that, at one point, you were in band simply to be creative. Damn it feels good.

I have no idea what the future holds, but right now Hazzy is next to me making some kind of cat sculpture – at least that’s what he reckons it is. The heater is on, we’re eating popcorn and chatting. That’s enough for right now for me.

I can’t believe the stuff this band has allowed me – and us – to do, and for the people we met. I’ve been lucky enough to share a drink and a hug with a lot of you around the world, and I am thankful for the opportunity to tell you how much it means to me. Viva la Brasi.

With love,

Richo

Luca Brasi play the Hobart UniBar on Friday, June 27th with Glass Media, Dvrkworld and Ema. All remaining tickets are on sale now via Oztix. Tyler has encouraged readers to donate to The Neuroblastoma Foundation: https://www.neuroblastoma.org.au/donate.