Woman pays £66,000 for cancer beam treatment
ASWANSEA woman will be the first breast cancer patient to receive proton beam therapy in Britain.
Jan Johnson was diagnosed in May, and immediately did her research to find the best treatment for her.
Proton beam therapy is a different type of radiotherapy. It uses a high energy beam of protons rather than high energy X-rays to deliver a dose of radiotherapy for patients with cancer.
It is a new treatment, used more in the United States, and only one other person in Britain has received this treatment.
Mrs Johnson, who runs Phantom Prestige Car Hire in Swansea, said: “I have triple negative breast cancer, I was diagnosed on May 4 this year.
“I had a mammogram and a biopsy that day, and on the eleventh they told me I had to have a lumpectomy, in which the tumour was successfully removed.
“The good news was that it hadn’t gone to the lymph nodes or the healthy tissue, or my brain. However this triple negative breast cancer is quite aggressive. They want me to have radiotherapy and chemotherapy, but I don’t want that.
“This proton beam therapy is used a lot in America, and it’s very precise. After a lot of research I decided this was something I wanted. It would ensure that no other part of me would be damaged. We have this equipment in Wales, and it would be a shame not to use it.”
She said she went through her health insurance to ask them to fund it. She had been with the same provider for 30 years and had never had to use it.
“When I phoned them they said they wouldn’t cover this proton beam therapy, because it was experimental. It’s used successfully in America, so it’s not experimental, but they refused.
“That delayed my treatment, trying to convince them to cover it.”
She and her husband have had to pay over £66,600 for the treatment.
“Obviously we didn’t have that, so we’ve had to find ways of making it up.
“They ran tests on me to see the difference between traditional radiotherapy and the proton beam therapy, and there would be damage to my heart and lungs with the radiotherapy, but there was nothing with the proton beam.
“So on Monday, at the Rutherford Cancer Centre in Newport, I’ll be the first breast cancer patient in the UK to have this treatment.”
She added: “I’m really excited, and it’s not just about me, I think if this treatment is available to make people’s lives better, it should be available.”
She said a lot of women with breast cancer couldn’t afford to be ill from chemotherapy. “A lot have to work or have children, they can’t afford to take time away. I think everyone should be having this.”