Q&A: North Vancouver melanoma survivor talks crossing borders to beat cancer

When Gordon Cornwall's melanoma spread to his brain, he and his wife Claudia prepared for the worst.

But the North Vancouver couple's exhaustive research uncovered a reason for hope.

Battling Melanoma is the book Claudia wrote to chronicle the couple's struggle to get Gordon into a drug trial outside Canada, and ultimately how that effort saved his life.

The pair sat down with CBC's On the Coast host Stephen Quinn Tuesday during Melanoma Awareness Month to talk about their experience.

Quinn: After the diagnosis in 2013, where did the idea of going to the United States for treatment come from?

Gordon: The first advice came from my oncologist, Sasha Smiljanic. He said, "We tried this, we tried this, we tried this, now I think you should try an anti-PD1."

I got on clinicaltrials.gov and started to research and there were a number of trials available in the U.S. that I qualified for.

What is the drug you credit with saving your life?

Gordon: It's now called Keytruda, that's the marketing name, at that time it was called MK3475 — it's the same drug Jimmy Carter had — which has worked for him too.

It's available in Canada now.

What does it do exactly?

Gordon: It is an immunotherapy drug. Melanoma's strategy is to fool the immune system, it sends out antibodies that get into the [body's defensive] T cells and basically turn them off. So what the drug does is get into those same receptors ahead of the antibodies produced by the melanoma, and so the T cells remain active and alert to this foreign entity.

How costly was it for you to go to the United States to take part in the trial?

Gordon: It cost me the flight, hotel, and some blood tests, and minor medical treatments, but I didn't have to pay for the drug.

Claudia — tell me about the decision to turn this story into a book. What advice do you have for people in a similar situation?

Claudia: I wanted to let other people know what was available and what was possible. And I thought it was important to show also that we sometimes went from a second opinion to a third opinion, we didn't take the first opinion necessarily.

We looked for the oncologist who would be helpful, not all oncologists were very helpful or very up on the new drugs.

We also looked to patient support groups like the Melanoma Network of Canada, Save Your Skin Foundation locally, they had lots of information and made it possible for us to think that we could go down to the States.

Was it difficult to relive that experience to write the book?

Claudia: I was full of this advocacy theme, I really wanted to help other people, and so that really kept me going.

Gordon was told prepare for the worst, hope for the best, and yet there was real hope available.

What about people who don't have the resources that you have? Not everybody can afford to buy a plane ticket and put themselves up to go to a drug trial.

Claudia: Absolutely, that's where our system is kind of unfair.

Is there a policy that needs to change on that end?

Claudia: "Yes yes yes yes! Absolutely."

Gordon: "I think so"

Claudia: When Gordon was trying to get that drug, there were already studies out showing that it was very good, so it wasn't as if we were leaping into the great unknown, [to] a totally unknown substance. It was looking like 40 per cent had a response rate whereas standard treatments were very much less than that.

So I think they could have a policy, look at a case-by-case basis, and where there is information like that, maybe people could get some help with accessing such a trial.