KEY POINTS:
Lymphoma was not what Joanne Bayer expected when she saw her doctor, complaining of feeling tired.
"I mean, you work, you've got four kids - you've got a right to be tired, that sort of thing."
Her doctor found an enlarged spleen, and a diagnosis of follicular lymphoma followed. That was seven years ago.
Last month, Mrs Bayer finished a three-month course of lymphoma drug, mabthera.
She is due for tests in two weeks to see how much of her cancer has been affected, but already, she feels an improvement.
The drug is at the centre of a funding row, with the Leukaemia and Blood Foundation saying the application for the drug's use as standard treatment - as in Australia - has been unacceptably delayed.
An application lodged last year was considered in February by drug agency Pharmac's clinical advisory committee, which recommended its use but gave it a "low to medium" priority.
It is already funded for an aggressive form of lymphoma, and late-stage follicular lymphoma, when patients such as Mrs Bayer have not improved with conventional chemotherapy, or their disease is advanced.
Mrs Bayer does not see why it cannot be provided as a first-line treatment.
"If you've got the disease, the symptoms, and this is the treatment for it, why shouldn't you get it first off? Why should you have to wait until your situation worsens? "It doesn't make any sense to me."
The 48-year-old had initially been put on a wait-and-see approach by her oncologist, before being put on chemotherapy more than a year after diagnosis.
But she could not cope with the side-effects. "It threw my emotions out completely. It was just highs and lows - worst than I've ever had."
She opted out, and coped with the symptoms with natural therapies for five years. But this year her symptoms got worse - exacerbated by the appearance of two lumps on her breast and underarm.
The disease had by this stage advanced to a stage that qualified her to receive mabthera through the public system.
Her first dose started on June 22, and the two lumps disappeared almost immediately after.
Her last dose was on September 28, and she is due to go for tests in a fortnight. Clinical exams with her oncologist have gone well, but she knows the treatment only "knocks it back".
Pru Etcheverry, executive director of the Leukaemia & Blood Foundation, said delays with the funding of drugs such as mabthera are at odds with the Ministry of Health's Cancer Control Strategy, which promotes "timely and appropriate access to new medicines".
"Unfortunately, under New Zealand's current pharmaceutical funding system, low investment in important medicines and delays in approval and funding mean our provision is only on a par with developing countries like the Czech Republic and Poland."
The drug is costly, with a course costing around $36,000 - a factor of which drug agency Pharmac is mindful.
Mabthera is due for another review by Pharmac's cancer subcommittee in December.
