Buying Time [29/07/2001] PRODUCER: SARAH HALL REPORTER: ANNA KENNA Karen intro: A few weeks ago Auckland Reigan Allan wrote her will, planned her funeral. She'd been told she had only weeks to live. But today she's full of vitality and bursting to tell New Zealand why she's so alive. She's taking a combination of drugs available in most other western countries, but not yet in New Zealand. Her parents have been paying a small fortune to keep their daughter alive, literally buying time. Anna Kenna with the story. REIGAN ALLAN: I can’t even comprehend the turnaround, it's so overwhelming. Six weeks ago they sort of gave me six weeks to live and now I am living. ANNA (V/O): Just a few weeks back Reigan Allan was planning her own funeral. Now she’s back at her part time modelling job, very much a living example of what the right drugs can do. REIGAN ALLAN: They can give you back your life in essence. Don’t know for how long, but while I’m feeling good and able to do things, I'm really going to enjoy life. ANNA (V/O): At just 23 Reigan is one of New Zealand’s youngest breast cancer patients. REIGAN: I've never heard of anyone my age having breast cancer. I mean everything that you read about is 50 year old women and 60 year old women having breast cancer, so the thought was there but it wasn’t real. ANNA: When did it become real? REIGAN: The day they actually told me that I had cancer. ANNA (V/O): The news she had cancer put a stop to a very active young woman who above all, loved to travel. REIGAN: The first night we went to the Eiffel Tower, saw the Arc de Triomphe. ANNA: Memories now all the more precious. REIGAN: Isn't that night sky amazing. ANNA (V/O): When Reigan discovered the lump in her breast a year ago she’d just finished her degree in business studies and was looking forward to establishing a career. But instead of planning her life, Reigan began fighting to save it. First there was surgery to remove her breast, followed by four months of chemotherapy and then radiation treatment. (I/V): Did it feel at times that the cure was almost worse than the disease? REIGAN: At times, yes but you focus on the fact that it is only four months, it’s going to be four months of this and then I’m going to be fine. ANNA (V/O): But Reigan wasn’t fine. Just two weeks after she'd finished treatment in January this year she learned the cancer had spread to her liver and bones. REIGAN: I was really disappointed because I'd been through all that and I was just starting to plan to get on with the rest of my life. ANNA: Did you feel bitter, angry? REIGAN: Really angry, but I mean why me, what have I done to deserve this and I know I haven't done anything. I mean, it's a lottery. ANNA (V/O): A lottery in which the odds may have been stacked against her. Reigan's father served in Vietnam as a pilot, exposed like many other veterans, to defoliant sprays that have been linked to cancer and birth deformities. As well as Reigan’s cancer, her brother was born with a cleft palate. REIGAN: It’s the only explanation we've got, and you search for explanations to try and justify what’s going on. I mean we don’t have breast cancer in the family, we don’t have any cancer history in our family at all. ANNA (V/O): Six weeks ago Reigan was at her lowest. She saw her brother, Alister's 21st birthday party as her last opportunity to farewell friends and family. (I/V): Your mum said you referred to that party as a living funeral. REIGAN: Yes. ANNA: That’s a pretty grim sort of description. REIGAN: But I wanted to see everyone again, have a chance to see all my friends. I wanted everyone to see me as well as I could be. TRISH ALLAN: There have just been days where she's laid on the couch and just drifted in and out of sleep. ANNA: Reigan's mother, Trish Allan. TRISH ALLAN: And those days are like you imagine the last days of somebody’s life might be and you really think this is going to happen soon. ANNA (V/O): The blackest day was when Reigan decided to stop treatment. Her parents reluctantly supported her decision and watched their cherished daughter, who’d always been active, healthy and fiercely independent, begin to slip away. Reigan wrote her will and even planned her funeral. REIGAN: I felt so lousy and the treatment that I'd tried before had made me feel so spaced out and sleepy and my quality of life was, I didn’t call it quality of life. ANNA (V/O): Housebound by this stage Reigan’s only link with the outside world was via the Internet. She began swapping stories with other breast cancer patients around the world. She says they were shocked that she wasn’t getting the type of drug therapy that was prolonging their lives. Those drugs, including Xeloda, Navelbine and Herceptin, are common treatments overseas. In fact over four years ago Herceptin was heralded as a revolutionary breakthrough in the treatment of breast cancer. This American woman, whose cancer like Reigan’s, had spread to her bones and liver, couldn’t believe the drug’s effect. WOMAN PATIENT: My liver is completely clean and I just had an assessment last week, I had a CT scan in the abdomen and liver - none of my organs show any disease at all. ANNA (V/O): While these drugs are routinely offered in many countries, they’re not in New Zealand because they're too expensive. Despite the cost Reigan decided they were her last hope. She’s been on them for over a month. BRUCE DONNELLY: And at the moment we’re looking at Reigan’s treatment running at approximately $2,400 per week. ANNA (V/O): Reigan’s father Bruce Donnelly, now a commercial pilot, is using his retirement savings to fund her treatment. BRUCE DONNELLY: We don’t have a choice, people say you’ve got a choice. There is no choice, she is our daughter. And for as long as we can afford to do it we will do it. TRISH ALLAN: I mean this is a girl who was lying on a couch thinking she wasn’t going to be here for her dad's birthday this week. ANNA (V/O): Just weeks after beginning the treatment Reigan is back to leading a near normal life, even completing her Master’s degree at university. REIGAN: I know that it’s not going to cure my disease but it’s giving me quality and quantity of life. I’m getting a chance to go and do things like my friends do. Not to the same extent but I can go out for dinner again, I can go to the movies and go back to university and study. BRUCE DONNELLY: The drugs are not only working for Reigan, they’re working for the whole family. Not just giving the drugs to Reigan, the whole family, all of us have picked up. ANNA (V/0): But Reigan realises her new lease on life comes at a huge cost to her family. REIGAN: I'm really angry that the drugs are there and we know that they work for people, for women, and they're not available to us in the public system. We have to make a conscious decision based on whether we can afford them or not. ANNA: But do you understand the argument that expensive drugs have to be rationed, that the health system just doesn't have a bottomless purse. REIGAN: But who has a right to put a price on my life. I mean isn’t everyone’s life worth something? ANNA (V/O): Two months ago Reigan and her family sought help from Health Minister Annette King. Last Tuesday they got a letter. REIGAN: Well it's talking about them possibly making Xeloda public, but it doesn't even mention the Herceptin and Navelbine, which is what I'm on. ANNA (V/OL): King said while New Zealand is reviewing cancer treatments it can’t afford all the chemotherapy drugs used overseas. REIGAN (READING): "I am sorry I am unable to give you a more positive response." Her response to my life. Great. ANNA (V/O): But a day later the Minister delivered this news to 20/20. ANNETTE KING: Next week we are announcing the nationwide list of oncology drugs that will be used at the six cancer treatment places in New Zealand. ANNA (V/O): On that list of drugs that will be free from October, are the two that have caused such a dramatic improvement in Reigan's health. King says the timing of the announcement is purely coincidental. (I/V): But you must see how this looks. Two days ago this family get a letter from you saying that there’s really little you can do at this stage. 20/20 rings your office. The next day you tell us that these drugs are going to be publicly available. ANNETTE KING: Well I would like to give you credit for it Anna, but it’s not correct. It has taken months and months of work. If it could have been done faster by the working party we would have announced it sooner. There has been no delay by me. ANNA (V/O): By the time her drugs become free, Reigan family will have spent fifty thousand dollars. And while they’re angry they’ve been put in that position, they don’t begrudge their daughter a cent. BRUCE DONNELLY: We have to offer Reigan that hope. She deserves it. She has spent 23 years now working pretty hard to get to be who she is. And she deserves everything we can give her, and that's what she'll get. ANNA: How has it changed your approach to life, having cancer? REIGAN: Every day is quite special now. Try and find something special in every day, even if it’s just spending time with the family. Backannounce The full list of new cancer drugs which are now to be made available, will be announced next week.