Cancer pioneer flies to US for life-saving treatment

A BOY from Rochdale was flown to America for life-saving cancer treatment.

Morgan was just 12 years old when he was diagnosed with cancer.

A BBC Horizon documentary - entitled The 250 Million Pound Cancer Cure - aired on BBC 2 and followed his journey, and others like him, through treatment.

Morgan developed a growth on his face and tests revealed he had a rare form of the disease in the soft tissue beneath his skin.

“When I got told that I had cancer, my first thought was, ‘is it curable?,’” Morgan, now 15, recalled.

There was no conventional treatment available to him, he lived ●●Morgan, from Rochdale, was 12 when he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. He went to America for proton beam therapy. just half an hour from The Christie, but the Proton Beam Therapy Unit he needed wasn’t finished yet.

The pioneering treatment is a type of radiotherapy that targets certain cancers precisely, shrinking tumours, increasing success rates and reducing side-effects.

Chemotherapy didn’t work, and surgery and radiotherapy were too risky.

Instead, the decision was made to send Morgan to America for treatment.

At a cost to the NHS of £100,000, the teenager was one of around 120 children that year to be sent abroad for proton beam therapy while the new centres were being built in the UK.

“When you’re undergoing treatment you cant actually feel it,” Morgan said.

“The side affects were bad burns like someone had thrown a boiling hot kettle over your face, it was very red, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

Morgan has now been cancer free for three years.

Since then, the UK’s first Proton Beam Therapy Unit has opened at The Christie, in Manchester, and remains the only one of its kind in the country.