Chemo bungle victim Andrew Knox desperately seeking bone-marrow transplant donor

CHEMOTHERAPY scandal victim Andrew Knox is pinning his hopes on finding a bone-marrow transplant donor as he undergoes extreme chemotherapy destroying his own cancerous marrow.

Andrew Knox needs bone marrow transplant donor. Picture: Mark Brake

• Government may pay chemo bungle victims’ inquest legal costs
• Chemo bungle victim told his leukaemia has returned on his birthday
• Andrew Knox: This chemo error may well kill me
• Andrew Knox tells his story of the RAH’s chemo blunder and cover-up

CHEMOTHERAPY scandal victim Andrew Knox is pinning his hopes on finding a bone-marrow transplant donor as he undergoes extreme chemotherapy destroying his own cancerous marrow.

Facing the worst, his sense of humour still shines through, telling The Advertiser: “Like one of your advertisers says, it would be an: ‘Oh, what a feeling!’ moment for a donor to be able to say they saved a life.”

Mr Knox was one of 10 leukaemia patients who received only half doses of chemotherapy between July 2014 and January 2015 because of a typographical error which was eventually spotted by an alert clinician.

Johanna Pinxteren, 76, Christopher McRae, 67, and Bronte Higham, 67, have since died, and a coronial inquest has been planned.

On December 14 Mr Knox entered a lead-lined, positive pressure room at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for three weeks of extreme chemotherapy aimed at killing the cancer in his bone marrow.

Andrew Knox giving evidence at the parliamentary inquiry into the chemo scandal last year.

The isolation chamber was designed to prevent infection as the chemotherapy broke down his immunity system’s defences.

He underwent a biopsy on Thursday to see if he was in an induced remission and would learn the results on Monday.

If the news was positive, then would immediately commence a second round of intense chemotherapy.

“If I am not in an induced remission there will need to be a complete rethink,” he said.

“They are annihilating my bone marrow to get rid of the cancer cells. There’s no guarantee I’ll survive — if I pick up a complication like pneumonia that might be the end of it.

“If we do succeed in getting through, the challenge then will be to very quickly find a compatible stem cell donor.

“My survival depends on finding a match somewhere in the world and, going through this, I would commend everyone to register to be a stem cell donor with the Red Cross Blood Service.

“It is not actually bone marrow they take — they simply harvest stem cells by taking blood. It is very easy.”

Mr Knox has demanded a Royal Commission into the scandal and said it should cover what happened to a planned computer safeguard which may have prevented the bungle.

“It would not have stopped the typographical error but it would be prevented it proliferating,” he said.

“Instead of introducing the computer safeguards, they were swamped by EPAS.

“There has been a serial cover-up and culture of denial right through to the Premier.”