Chemotherapy shrank Tony Gumpert's colorectal cancer. And radiofrequency ablation managed to burn away some of the tumours.
But his cancer, diagnosed in April of 2006, kept coming back.
There was, however, a way to prolong his life, and the Ontario government had just the thing: In April of this year, it approved more than $90,000 (U.S.) worth of therapy for him in the form of cetuximab, to be provided over eight weeks at a cancer hospital in Ogdensburg, N.Y., about 80 kilometres south of Ottawa.
After that, Mr. Gumpert would undergo a CT scan to see whether his tumours had withered. The results of the scan would help determine whether more treatment could be approved for him.
Tony Gumpert, who had been hoping for U.S. cancer treatment, in his Ottawa home. (Bill Grimshaw/The Globe and Mail)
But his medical oncologist, Derek Jonker, had other ideas.
“He suggested I might want this test, at my expense,” recalled Mr. Gumpert, now 65.
If Mr. Gumpert had the wild-type K-ras gene, his oncologist explained, he could benefit from treatment. If he had the mutant form, cetuximab would not be recommended. The odds were with him: About 60 per cent of patients have wild-type K-ras.
That was enough for Mr. Gumpert, a retired Canadian Forces lieutenant-colonel, to run to the hospital in Ottawa, where he obtained a sample of his tumour and sent it by courier to a New York laboratory.
When the results came back in April, the news wasn't good: Mr. Gumpert fell into that 40 per cent of colorectal cancer patients who had the mutant form of the gene, which meant cetuximab would have no effect.
“It's not just the drive down; that particular drug has some fairly strong side effects such as acne and skin rashes. … I really wasn't looking forward to those,” he said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. “It was bittersweet. It would have been nice if this could have worked on my tumours.”
For another patient, it did work.
Clark Pagtakhan, 39, of Ottawa, who had a home-cleaning business, paid to take the test as well, and found out treatment would be worth his while. In May, he began making weekly trips to Ogdensburg for provincially funded treatment.
And Mr. Pagtakhan said he had recently received some good news. “A CT scan revealed tumours on part of my liver had shrunk,” he said. Lisa Priest
