Now I can carry on with life as normal
FIONA Leslie is one of thousands of women in the UK living with incurable breast cancer – not that you would know it.
‘I have carried on working, I look after my husband, I care for my elderly mother,’ the 49-year-old from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, said. ‘I live as normal a life as you can do.’
Mrs Leslie, who runs her own public relations business, says her lifestyle is possible because of the breakthrough drug Kadcyla.
Married to husband Ray, 64, she was diagnosed in November 2013 and had a mastectomy as well as radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
Despite this the cancer spread to her lungs and spine. But in April 2015 she started taking Kadcyla. ‘It’s an amazing treatment – you don’t lose your hair, you don’t have any nausea, there are very few side effects,’ she said.
The drug has also driven back the cancer – there is no evidence of active disease in her spine tumours and her lung tumours have not grown in two years. She said Kadcyla gives women ‘many extra months, and even years, of life with their families and friends’.
Mrs Leslie added: ‘To know that this opportunity was going to be taken away from other patients, many with young children, condemning them to an earlier death was simply horrific and cruel.’