gets a second chance after cancer
The Seachange star is grateful for being given a second chance at life
Tom Long was riddled with cancer and told he had just days to live when he was given one last chance – and invited to take part in a medical trial in the US.
“I was at the point where my number was up,” the Australian actor told Fairfax last week after revealing that not only did the treatment save his life but it also “killed” his cancer.
“It was either I do the trial or I start palliative care. It was this choice of, well, should I just sit by a stream in the green grass and look up at the sun and enjoy the time I have left. Or should I climb the mountain.”
And to many the mountain may have seemed insurmountable. Tom weighed
just 60kg and was told he had three months to live in January.
But for this much-loved star of f Seachange, The Dish and Two Hands there was no choice to be made and he immediately left for the US.
During the traumatic trial, doctors genetically re-engineered his own immune T cells and infused them back into his body six weeks later. His modified immune cells then hunted and destroyed the cancer cells in what t his son Ariel called a miracle.
Tom, 50, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2012 and hasn’t acted since he collapsed on stage at the Sydney Opera House that same year.
Since then Tom has endured three stem cell transplants, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, over the past seven years. Miraculously, he was given the all-clear from cancer four weeks ago, and says it’s made him a “lot more grateful for living”.
“After having a death sentence hanging over my head for years I really can’t explain the feeling,” he said, adding that his wife Rebecca Fleming, who he met and married after his shock terminal cancer diagnosis, has been his “absolute rock” throughout his incredible cancer battle.