Prostate cancer sufferer Mike Hughes from Runaway Bay forced to pay eye-watering amount for treatment

A Gold Coast man desperate for more time with his family is being forced to drain his savings for treatment against a killer disease. Here’s why.

A GOLD COAST man faces having to remortgage his home to pay the eye-watering cost of treatment he is receiving for prostate cancer.

Mike Hughes from Runaway Bay said he had no other choice if he wanted to see more of his three-year-old grandson West growing up.

Mr Hughes was diagnosed with the killer disease two years ago after going to his doctor due to shooting pains in his back.

“I went to my local GP, and this is the first time I’d heard these words, have you had your PSA done? I said well I’ve been coming to you for five years, you’ve never mentioned this PSA.

“... And he came back and he said, oh wow, your PSA is really elevated.”

Runaway Bay resident Mike Hughes at his Runaway Bay home. Photo: Regi Varghese.

Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) tests are used primarily to screen for possible signs of prostate cancer, which kills 3000 men in Australia each year. It was soon confirmed that Mike had the disease.

“I had the MRI and he goes wow, you’ve got a tumour on your spine, which explained the back pain,” he said. “It was a very large tumour, and I had over 170 legions sitting on the bones.

“... It shows up (with a special dye), and I’m glowing. His words to me were: ‘you look like a Dalmatian’.”

Treatment with chemotherapy and radiotherapy killed off the tumour on Mike’s back and sent his PSA levels right down again.

But after a year they started creeping back up. A second round of chemo and radiotherapy didn’t work.

“The news was, there’s nothing we can really do,” Mr Hughes said.

It was at this point that his doctor mentioned a new treatment, lutetium, a form of targeted radiotherapy which had shown highly promising results. The catch? It cost $11,000 a pop.

“They were saying five or six courses. So we’re talking $60,000,” Mr Hughes said.

Mr Hughes has since been accepted for the treatment at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.

Professor Louise Emmett, who is Director of Theranostics and Nuclear Medicine at the hospital, said letitium was like aiming a precisely targeted “nuclear warhead” at cancer cells.

“Cancers have lots of receptors on their cell surface, and we’re targeting one that’s called PSMA,” Prof Emmett said.

“... Two randomised trials have been done, one in Australia, and we found that it had higher treatment responses than chemotherapy and was better tolerated.

“In the larger study, involving around 850 men, it found better overall survival.

“... But probably the biggest thing it does is it improves pain. Mike was in a lot of pain. It improves quality of life.”

St Vincent’s has provided Mr Hughes with the treatment at cost – $5000 a time – and it has already worked wonders, almost halving his PSA level without the nasty side effects of chemo.

But the cost of the treatment and travel back and forth to Sydney remains a significant issue for Mr Hughes, a self-funded retiree.

The Australasian Association of Nuclear Medical Specialists (AANMS) has applied to the federal department of health to get Lutetium treatment publicly funded. A decision is expected in October.

In the meantime, Mr Hughes says he will reverse mortgage his Runaway Bay home so he can continue his treatment.

“It’s eating away my savings. This is what’s stressful,” he said.

“But if I see that PSA level going down, hey, what are you going to do?

“You’d mortgage, you know, to spend some more time, especially with my grandson.

“... I said to my doctor, keep me alive, I want to see this guy grow up a little bit.”

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