Woman says cancer treatment she had to fund herself has helped tackle her disease

A mother of three who was forced to fund her own treatment with a cancer drug that is available free to other patients says it has helped in tackling the disease.

Maria Waters, from Killiney, Co Dublin, has spent over €21,000 to treat her head and neck cancer with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab after the Health Service Executive and her health insurer Irish Life refused to fund the treatment.

About €16,000 of this was raised through charity after her case was highlighted in The Irish Times at the start of February.

Last week, an MRI showed that after treatment with “pembro” and chemotherapy, “the tumour in my stomach has shrunk to the point that it is no longer evident on the scan”, Ms Waters says.

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Combination therapy

“What does this mean? Well, it shows that the combination therapy of chemo and pembrolizumab did the job in eradicating the cancer.”

As the scan cannot show which therapy worked better, “going forward the only way to know for certain is to pause one therapy and continue with the other and hope that the tumour does not return”, she says.

“I feel it’s like a game of ‘whack-a-mole’ as you whack one beast down, it has the tendency to pop up somewhere else.”

Her consultant, Dr David Gallagher at St Vincent’s University Hospital, has now advised she stop having chemo, which she was having difficulty tolerating, and continue with immunotherapy using a different drug, nivolumab.

Pembro has helped extend cervical cancer advocate Vicky Phelan’s life; initially she funded it herself, until the State agreed to pay. Minister for Health Simon Harris then agreed to provide it to women affected by the CervicalCheck controversy and, after coming under political pressure, to all women with cervical cancer whose doctors recommended the treatment.

Head and neck

This was despite it not being licensed for this form of the disease anywhere in Europe, and despite evidence that it has limited effectiveness in treating cervical cancer. The drug has been approved for melanoma and a small number of other cancers, but not the head and neck cancer Ms Waters has.

The “first-line” administration of the drug to her with chemo was also not covered by her health insurance. However, the “second-line” treatment plan now proposed by Dr Gallagher is covered.

“We will know within a few months if this is the right approach and if not then I will revert back to chemotherapy. Of course, I hope this is not the case.”

Thanking Dr Gallagher and those who contributed to her fundraiser, she says the money raised alleviated “a massive amount of stress” from her husband Robert. “Without this financial help, I would not have been able to concentrate on getting better and beating this disease once and for all.”