Cancer - the cost of a life: Drug lets grandpa tick off bucket list

Bob Hill, was diagnosed with melanoma in 2013, has just finished a new cancer drug trial for melanoma called Pembrolizumab and is doing well with the cancer decreasing. Photo / Brett Phibbs

In a five-part series, the Herald investigates controversies in cancer testing and treatment and reports on the moving stories of people afflicted with cancer. In the fourth part of the series, Herald health reporter Martin Johnston turns his attention to melanoma.

More than a year after he stopped taking a "game-changer" medicine for advanced melanoma, Bob Hill feels so good he is preparing for a half-marathon.

When the 72-year-old featured in the Herald in January, the next item on his bucket-list was the wire-jump off Auckland's Sky Tower. He's ticked that off and has a new challenge.

"I'm going to do a half-marathon next year. It will be a run-walk but I'm bloody well going to do it."

This is a man told he would probably die within six months from incurable melanoma, a disease he attributes to shirtless days as a regimental sergeant major under Southeast Asia's tropical sun.

In April 2013, the Masterton grandfather had a tumour removed from his chest wall that was diagnosed as a secondary melanoma. Within six months it had regrown to the size of an apple and was judged incurable.

Mr Hill, a national vice-president of the Returned Services Association, was accepted into a clinical trial and started receiving infusions of the melanoma drug Keytruda in January last year.

By September last year, there was no sign of the cancer lesions that had been on his lungs, liver and chest wall. The drug infusions stopped the following month.

"It's been a year since I have had any cancer treatment and I'm still cancer-free," says Mr Hill.

"Keytruda - it's a game-changer.

"I think Pharmac should fund it. People are dying because they haven't got access to this drug."

The Series

Monday: Breast Cancer
Tuesday: Bowel Cancer
Yesterday: Lung Cancer
Today: Melanoma
Friday: Prostate Cancer
Friday: Prostate Cancer