Posted by Michael Wonder on 23 Jul 2018
The man who should be four years dead
23 July 2018 - John Ashton had always wanted to see Cape Reinga. When he found out his time was running out, the 47-year-old set off in a campervan with his wife Louise and their two young boys, on a bucket list road trip.
The Otago University pharmacologist didn't seem a likely candidate for lung cancer.
He was a fit non-smoker, who could run 10km in 35 minutes. By the time doctors worked out what was causing his chronic cough, John was riddled with tumours.
The article on Australian research gave him new hope. They were trialling a new medicine, crizotinib, which targeted his particular mutation of lung cancer. His oncologist here didn't know it existed.
But there was a hitch - unfunded in New Zealand, it would cost him $13,000 a month. The family was over the moon when Pfizer granted him compassionate access.
