True story. Sorry, this is long.

NSFW: Confronting

Back in the 1950s, my FIL was an apprentice engineer with the local Nestle factory in the town that he grew up in, in New South Wales. As an apprentice, he was required to do the shit kicker jobs. One of those jobs was insulating the boiler. With bags of asbestos powder.

Fast forward to 2010. FIL is going for a walk, as he regularly does. 2 minutes later he comes back in and asks his wife to call an ambulance, that he is having trouble breathing. Turns out he was having a heart attack, which would claim about 75% of his heart function. He was ambulances to the local hospital. When they couldn’t help stabilise his heart, he was flown to the large hospital in the big city (Sydney). Another hour in surgery, and they were able to stabilise him. It was established that the heart attack was caused by exposure to asbestos, but that didn’t kill him.

A further fast forward to 2016, and he is seeing a liver specialist, who asks him how much he drinks, to have so much cirrhosis on his liver. He was a tee-totaler his entire life. This was later attributed to Nestle’s shitfuckery.

2017, and FIL is sleeping later and struggles to do the exercises that were easy, only a couple of months ago. GP does tests, takes blood work. Calls back a couple of days later. FIL needs to go to the hospital NOW. It’s mesothelioma. Terminal, of course. FIL jokes that this is putting a damper on his goal of living to 120.

I moved in and did the heavy lifting for the final 6 months of his life. What stuck with me the most was a comment he made. Very distressing. “Sometimes I wonder if I just end things. I hate waking up each day, and feel like I’m drowning until I go to sleep.”

He didn’t end it. Instead, he fought. He fought for his wife. With the help of his daughter (my now ex-wife) he engaged a lawyer to sue Nestle for their culpability. Of course they fought, because they’re Nestle. They were banking on him being mentally gone, by the time the court hearing came about.

The court hearing turned into a bedside hearing. A judge and the court representatives, his legal team and Nestle’s legal team all piled into the small room where he was propped up on a motorised bed. Not only was he not mentally gone, he was able to recount names, dates and places from 60 years before.

He died the next morning.

Nestle settled, with the largest payout in NSW history for an asbestos related death.

Fuck Nestle. Fuck them in spades.