I spent £21,000 on treatment but the cancer is back

11:00am Saturday 5th July 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

A MOTHER who thought she was cured of cancer after paying £21,000 of her pension money for a drug has once again developed the illness.

Barbara Moss, who believed she had beaten bowel cancer after cashing in her pension to pay for a drug not available on the NHS, has now been told her cancer has returned and that it is so widespread it is inoperable.

Now she has been told she has only a 10 per cent chance of survival but has asked that doctors do not tell her how long they think she has left.

Mother-of-two Mrs Moss, of Aconbury Close, Newtown, Worcester, said: “It was an absolute shock when I found out the cancer had returned. The chaplain at St Richard’s Hospice even said he has never seen a case that was so up and down as mine. It has been a rollercoaster. I was back on chemo within days after I had put it all behind me. I thought I had a future.”

Your Worcester News reported in January how former English teacher Mrs Moss, aged 53, survived “terminal” cancer after spending her pension on the drug Avastin.

Worcestershire Primary Care Trust would not provide the drug because it was not approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) which had said it was not “cost-effective”.

The drug attacks cancer cells as an immune system attacks a virus. The drug shrank the cancer, which was diagnosed in November 2006, so that the tumour was small enough to be safely removed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham on October 4 last year.

But a scan at Worcestershire Royal Hospital days before she was due to fly out to France on Wednesday, May 16, revealed the cancer had returned and is now in her lymph nodes, chest and neck.

She said: “You think you’re fine for all the drugs you need on the NHS – you’re not. The NHS needs to make these drugs more available.

“I didn’t want private treatment but I needed the drug. It’s a postcode lottery. You can’t gamble with the situation when you need treatment.”

The family had to cancel their four-month holiday in France so she could be near medical experts in the UK although she was able to have a two-week break.

She will continue to take Irinotecan – the chemotherapy she needs to treat cancer – but not Avastin, the drug that she said was responsible for shrinking her original cancer until it became operable and the tumour could be removed.

Her consultant believes that a higher dose of Irinotecan would be more effective at treating a widespread cancer.

Despite her concerns about the way drugs are administered to NHS patients Mrs Moss said medical staff who treated her had been “fantastic”.