Medical bills: ‘It’s eating my savings’
A GOLD COAST man faces having to remortgage his home to pay eye-watering prostate cancer treatment bills.
Mike Hughes from Runaway Bay said he had no other choice if he wanted to see more of his three-year-old grandson West growing up. He was diagnosed two years ago after going to his doctor for shooting back pain.
“I went to my local GP, and this is the first time I’d heard these words, ‘Have you had your PSA done’? I said well I’ve been coming to you for five years, you’ve never mentioned this PSA. And he came back and he said, ‘Oh wow, your PSA is really elevated’.”
Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) tests are used to screen for signs of prostate cancer, which kills 3000 Australian men a year. It was soon confirmed Mike had the disease.
“I had the MRI and he goes ‘You’ve got a tumour on your spine, which explained the back pain. It was a very large tumour, and I had over 170 legions sitting on the bones.
“It shows up (with a special dye), and I’m glowing. His words to me were: ‘you look like a Dalmatian’.”
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy killed off the back tumour and sent his PSA levels down. But after a year they started creeping back up. A second round of chemo and radiotherapy didn’t work.
“The news was, there’s nothing we can really do.”
His doctor mentioned new treatment, lutetium, targeted radiotherapy which had shown highly promising results. The catch? It’s $11,000 a pop.
“They were saying five or six courses. So we’re talking $60,000,” Mr Hughes said.
Mr Hughes has since been accepted for the treatment at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.
It’s Director of Theranostics and Nuclear Medicine Professor Louise Emmett said letitium was like aiming a precisely targeted “nuclear warhead” at cancer cells.
“Two randomised trials have been done, one in Australia, and we found it had higher treatment responses than chemotherapy and was better tolerated.”
A larger study of 850 men found better overall survival.
“But probably the biggest thing it does is it improves pain. Mike was in a lot of pain. It improves quality of life.”
St Vincent’s has provided Mr Hughes with it at cost – $5000 a pop – and it has already worked wonders, almost halving his PSA level without nasty side effects.
But the cost of the treatment and travel to Sydney remains a significant issue for Mr Hughes, a self-funded retiree.
The Australasian Association of Nuclear Medical Specialists
(AANMS) has applied to the federal department of health to get Lutetium treatment publicly funded. A decision is expected in October.
Mr Hughes says he will reverse mortgage his Runaway Bay: “It’s eating my savings. This is what’s stressful. But if I see that PSA level going down, hey, what are you going to do?
“You’d mortgage, you know, to spend some more time, especially with my grandson. I said to my doctor, keep me alive, I want to see this guy grow up a little bit.