Crowd funds give hope in cancer scare
IT’S been the longest year of Jie Eccles’ life but thanks to the generous donations of strangers, he may now still have many years ahead of him.
The 28-year-old from South Hobart had his worst fears confirmed when he was diagnosed with stage 3 malignant sarcoma just before Christmas last year.
Sarcomas are a group of cancers, which more commonly affect young people, that arise in the connective tissues, including fat, muscle, cartilage or bone and account for fewer than 3 per cent of all cancers.
Although he began radiation therapy immediately, Mr Eccles’ was told he had a 33 per cent chance of survival beyond five years should he continue with surgery and treatment in Australia. But a highly successful crowd-funding campaign raised $40,000 in 12 days and enabled him to go to a clinical trial at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas.
Mr Eccles has just returned home after five weeks of proton beam therapy at the world-leading centre, which is so big it has its own postcode.
Proton beam therapy is a type of radiation which uses an accelerator to target beams at cancer cells.
Australia’s first proton beam therapy centre will be built in Adelaide after the Federal Government committed $68 million to its establishment this year. It is expected to be operational by 2020.
Mr Eccles has two weeks to wait before getting full medical reports back from Texas.
“I’m looking at having about an 80 per cent survival rate past five years, which is phenomenal for sarcoma,” he said. “Worst case scenario is I would have to continue having more of treatment. I don’t want to jump the gun, but we’re expecting a really good outcome.”
Mr Eccles has turned his thoughts to the future after being accepted into a University of Tasmania psychology course beginning next year.
“This whole experience has highlighted for me how important it is to have clinical trials and medical research in Australia to make proton therapy more accessible,” he said.
“I really want to help people that have walked down a similar path to me and that’s giving me something to look forward to into the future.”