KEY POINTS:
Anne Owen was facing death. She had cancer and she had only days, maybe a week, to live.
The cancer had spread from her right lung to the lining of her brain and spinal cord. She was suffering nausea and extreme pain in her head, neck and shoulders,
so bad that she sometimes collapsed on the floor of her home. It went on for months.
But now she looks a picture of life - bright and enthusiastic.
Mrs Owen, who turns 56 this week, was lucky enough to be able to try a relatively new drug, Tarceva, one that costs her $4500 a month as it is not state-funded.
She said that for her, Tarceva was a miracle drug. Soon after starting it, an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan showed no trace of cancer.
"It's a tablet you have to take forever. You take it as long as it's working for you. Hopefully for me that's another 20 or 30 years."
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She started Tarceva in September while in Auckland City Hospital. Her cancer had been diagnosed in March 2004 after she noticed breathlessness when walking uphill.
She had surgery to drain and close up the membrane sac around her lungs. Two courses of chemotherapy followed. They drove the cancer into remission for several months each time, but it came back.
"She got started on Tarceva as a last-ditch attempt," said Dr Richard Sullivan, the clinical director of medical oncology at the Auckland District Health Board, who suggested she try the drug. "Within days her tumour melted away.
"She went from being wheelchair-bound, confused, hospital-bound for six weeks; she walked out of hospital independent, asymptomatic, 11 days after starting her drug. She had a Lazarus response."
He said Tarceva worked remarkably well in a small number of lung cancer patients, perhaps 10 per cent.
Mrs Owen - a mother of three adult children who lives with her husband, Bruce, in Epsom - has only minor side-effects from Tarceva, but has experienced a serious problem of unknown cause since taking the tablets: Partial loss of her sight.
As a result she cannot drive or read and describes her vision as "like wearing sunglasses".
She said her doctors had discounted Tarceva as a cause and had speculated that cancer cells might have damaged her optic nerve.
But there was no comparison between having active cancer symptoms and being partly sighted. "I can put up with it."