A Tayside writer who was struck with a deadly strain of ovarian cancer has revealed she now faces a stark choice between “brutal” chemotherapy and costly treatment overseas, after an experimental NHS trial proved unsuccessful.
Fi Munro has spent the last four years fighting the terminal disease. She has had major surgery to remove several organs including her womb and spleen.
She has now has launched a crowdfunding appeal to help explore further treatment options in America, after immunotherapy failed to stop cancerous growths on her lungs.
The 34-year-old, from Carse of Gowrie, said she now accepted she can’t continue on her own.
“When I was first diagnosed, I wanted to be very independent and I wanted to do this on my own terms,” she said. “I found it quite hard to reach out and lean on other people.
“But what I’ve found over the last four years is that you find your strength in vulnerability, and that is what I’m trying to embrace this time. I’m ready to say I need your help.”
She said her 15-month immunotherapy trial worked on some parts of her body, but not her lungs. “After a few scans, we found there was no evidence of disease in my abdomen, but my lung tumours were growing,” she said. “The way my oncologist described it: It’s better than nothing, but it’s not working like it used to.
“I recently went in with abdominal and chest pains, and they told me the X-ray of my abdomen looked fined, but the lesions on my lungs had become significantly bigger.
“They have now booked a CT scan for New Year’s Eve to find out what’s going on. That will let us know how much spread has happened, and from there we can make a decision.”
She said: “At this stage, what the NHS can offer is more chemotherapy which I would really like to avoid. I found it to be brutal the first time, and when your stage four chemotherapy is not curative, then it is just there to prolong your life.
“I am now looking at working with doctors in American to do biopsies to see if there are more treatment options.
“Obviously, this treatment will be private and expensive, so I will have to fundraise for that.
“I’m only 34 and I have so much more living to do. I didn’t get this far to only get this far.”
She hopes to raise £10,000 to pay for treatment in the US in the new year.
Fi who wrote the book How Long Have You Got? is also exploring re-purposed medication, where drugs produced for other conditions are used against cancer.
“The NHS is wonderful and I can’t fault it in any way,” she said. “They have always been absolutely exceptional.
“I am aware that I do have the option of chemotherapy, but it’s just so hard and so battering on the body. I’m trying to prevent going back to that, or at least prolonging the need for it.
“If I turn down chemotherapy, the only other option on the NHS is end-of-life care and that is not something I’m considering.”
She said: “I don’t feel like I’m alone and I don’t feel that I’m out of options yet.”
To support the campaign visit Fi’s Go Fund Me page. There is also a link in the blog section of her website fkmunro.com
