Ged's cancer treatment 2

Ged is a good-sort and deserves a chance to fight this sudden and invasive disease - Melanoma stage 4, but it looks like we need some financial help...

The Doc says it's too advanced for chemo, the two options available to us are expensive.

BRAF inhibitor treatment costs $3680 per week (with some free weeks, but averages ~$2.5k per week. A new immuno therapy Keytruda (pembrolizumab) costs about $9k per shot.

The BRAF treatment for a few months is likely to buy several extra months, hopefully enough time for Dads own immune system to continue the shrinking of the tumours. Then we need to finish the cancer off with the new drug Keytruda.

Keytruda was featured in the NZ Listener magazine on 2nd of July 2015, and Sunday TV1 program 8th November 2015. This drug has fully reversed the same type of advanced melanoma cancer in other people.

Keytruda is currently being assessed by Pharmac for public funding, this final decision is likely to be made in February, and with enough political and media pressure we are hoping that the funding will occur.

As of Friday 4th of December, Dr Bernie aka "Dr Melanoma" has joined forces with Ged's public Oncologist Dr Delainy to start Dad on the B-RAF treatment as soon as next week (week starting 7th December) to reduce the tumours and prevent further complications occurring!

After two months of B-RAF inhibitor treatment, we are hoping to get on to the Keytruda "king-hit" medication, and hopefully it will be funded by then!

We already have enough money raised from the previous campaign for these two months of B-RAF treatment, so this page is in case we need more B-RAF or fund the Keytruda ourselves.