Melbourne cancer expert Professor Grant McArthur fights his own cancer battle

WORLD-leading Melbourne cancer expert Professor Grant McArthur has delivered bad news to countless patients. This time he was on the receiving end.

IT’S LATE September, 2014, and Professor Grant McArthur is addressing a packed conference hall in Madrid.

He’s wearing his “world cancer expert” hat today, delivering news of a major breakthrough in the treatment of a deadly skin cancer.

But as he approaches the lectern for the umpteenth time in his distinguished career, the Melbourne-born doctor is also acutely aware of another cap — loved husband and dad of three.

Just weeks earlier, Prof McArthur — one of Australia’s leading oncologists — had himself been diagnosed with cancer.

After three decades working to beat cancer, cancer was fighting back. And this time, it was very personal.

Prof McArthur, a health and fitness fanatic, had squeezed a check-up with his GP in between consultations with patients of his own at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

Cancer expert Professor Grant McArthur (centre) with wife Maree and children Ethan (18), Chloe (15) and Sarah (21). Picture: Stuart Walmsley

Feeling no symptoms of any description, the then 52-year-old had no reason to suspect any problems. But a routine physical prostate examination — recommended for men in his age group — led to a blood test. That was followed, over the next few weeks, by a biopsy and a hi-tech scan.

Having delivered bad news to countless cancer patients over the years, Prof McArthur says he didn’t need to wait for the official results. The numbers that jumped off the blood analysis report were enough.

“It was pretty obvious to me what the diagnosis was,” says Prof McArthur, who specialises in the research and treatment of melanoma.

“I spoke to some of my colleagues and my GP and they were a bit more circumspect. They wanted to be gentle with me, I think. Nobody wanted to say ‘well, that’s 90 per cent certain to be prostate cancer’. But I knew, most certainly, that I had prostate cancer.”

When his professional hunch became a confirmed diagnosis, Prof McArthur — who addressed Pope Francis and US Vice President Joe Biden at The Vatican on Friday, April 29 — headed straight to his computer.

While a regular patient might resort to Google, the medical oncologist consulted the latest professional data.

But his question was the same as any other human being: What are my chances of surviving?

“I did go straight to look at all the survival curves because my immediate concern was my family and my kids,” Prof McArthur said.

“(I was thinking) if I was to pass away, how would my family be? And what are the chances of that happening?”

THROUGHOUT their 27-year marriage, Maree McArthur has been pulled aside by many patients wanting to praise her husband’s bedside manner.

“They’ve said to me ‘oh, he spends so much time talking to us and explaining things, he answers all of our questions,” Mrs McArthur says. “It’s lovely to hear that”.

But when it came to three of the most difficult conversations of his life — telling his children he had cancer — Prof McArthur faltered a little. He was, he says, “fairly blunt”.

Mrs McArthur was by her husband’s side when he delivered the bad news, one by one, to Sarah, now 21, Ethan, 18, and Chloe, 15, in the family lounge room. “Well … he did ... and he will admit this ... he did a pretty bad job,” Mrs McArthur says.

“The first one he told was Chloe, who was 13 at the time. He just said ‘oh, Dad’s got cancer’. She just looked at me and burst into tears.

“He got a little bit better with each one, but he’s a funny fellow when it comes to his own situation. He’s just very matter of fact.”

A lot of family “hugs and questions and answers” followed. Mrs McArthur says disbelief was her first reaction to the final diagnosis.

“I was really quiet and frightened and shocked and, for about a day, I was angry,” she says.

“It’s his passion to try and stamp this disease out, it’s his life … so for Grant to get cancer was absolutely not on my radar. The way he has dedicated himself, the way he works and the hours he puts in, it just seemed so cruel. It’s a horrendous disease. It just strikes so unfairly.”

With the McArthur household turned upside down, Prof McArthur arranged his treatment — robotic surgery to remove his cancerous prostate was booked for six weeks later — and then got back to work.

He continued seeing his own patients, and attended international conferences, while he waited.

“A lot of patients get very anxious after a positive biopsy — ‘you’ve got to get the cancer out, doctor’ you know — but I was lucky to have my knowledge because it helped to diminish my anxiety,” Prof McArthur says.

“I knew that my cancer had been growing there for a long, long time — months to years, really — and that waiting four-eight weeks for surgery was no big deal because things were not going to spread much in that time. So I went on overseas trips and gave talks and kept working normally.”

But expert knowledge can work the other way, too. Prof McArthur explains that many patients are quick to assume their cancer battle is over once “the surgeon has got it all out”.

Vast experience has taught Prof McArthur it’s not that simple. And so, despite undergoing successful surgery in October 2014 — and with all scans and blood tests ever since coming back clear — he is not quite prepared to declare himself out of the woods.

As those survival curves told him, he has a 30 per cent chance of relapsing over the next 15 years: “But the chance of everything going really bad in the next five years and me passing on is really very low ... the stats are OK”.

So, too, remains his motivation. Just 11 weeks after his surgery, Prof McArthur, an amateur cyclist, clocked up personal best times for climbing Falls Creek and Mount Hotham.

THE SPEAKERS at this April’s international medical conference at The Vatican formed an unconventional mix. Prof McArthur, the only Australian invited to address the three-day forum, kicked off the session on cancer breakthroughs.

He was followed by Vice President Biden, who recently joined Barack Obama in launching the US Government’s $1 billion “moon shot” mission to cure cancer — and who lost his 46-year-old son Beau to brain cancer last year.

Then came an address by Pope Francis.

For Prof McArthur, it was a chance to tell the world about some of the breakthroughs that he, along with colleagues from Peter Mac and around the world, have achieved in the treatment of melanoma. (Making modern cancer drugs available to cancer patients in the developing world was another key message).

Survival rates for advanced melanoma, a particularly lethal form of cancer, are showing the first signs of significant improvement in decades.

And it’s courtesy of immunotherapy, which Prof McArthur says is the most exciting development he’s seen in his 33 years in cancer research.

Immunotherapy harnesses patients’ own immune systems to attack cancer cells. The results of some trials have been so spectacular that immune therapies are tipped for Nobel prize recognition.

“Unquestionably, that is the big news in cancer,” he says. “We’re just seeing this getting better all the time, with the range of cancers that can be treated.”

One of the highest-profile immunotherapy success stories, Ron Walker, was a patient of Prof McArthur. The Melbourne businessman was described as a “dead man walking” after being diagnosed with advanced melanoma.

But after managing to get himself onto a trial for the immune-based drug Keytruda in the US, he went into remission.

Mr Walker then joined Prof McArthur in successfully lobbying the Australian government to fast-track the drug’s listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

“Ron has been a fantastic advocate for access to the new wave of immune treatments through sharing his own experience,” Prof McArthur says.

“It has been a personal crusade for him to see others get the same outcome he has achieved.”

While Prof McArthur’s career has featured many success stories, he says one of the biggest challenges of the job is when treatment fails.

“When things move from what is an enormous challenge to an even bigger challenge ... patients’ needs are even greater during their end of life,” he says.

“I’ve been in the game a long time now and I’ve learnt from my patients that they can do amazing things, right up until their end of life.”

They include Melbourne Football Club legend Jim Stynes, who lost his battle with melanoma in 2012, and Clare Oliver, who used her melanoma diagnosis to campaign against solariums.

Within two years of Ms Oliver’s death at age 26, the Victorian Government had tightened laws around solariums, and banned them completely last year.

“Clare Oliver brought a lot of meaning to her life in a short period,” Prof McArthur says. “Jimmy Stynes once said to me that cancer made him a better person.”

Back in East Melbourne, where Peter Mac is based (until its move into the new Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Parkville next month), Prof McArthur is contemplating whether his cancer scare has made him better at his job.

“It has made me a better doctor, no doubt,” Prof McArthur says.

“There’s probably a slightly greater intensity of feeling towards the patient and what they are going through, and I think that’s good.”

Having recently graduated from three-monthly check-ups to one blood test every six months, the stress is easing for the McArthur family. Slowly.

“Cancer has also made me focus on planning the rest of my life, not simply days, weeks or months ahead but well into the future,” Prof McArthur says.

“I see my kids growing into wonderful young people with terrific lives ahead of them. I feel satisfied and excited about the future.”

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