New lease of life for cancer victim

Charlie Jones with his fiance Louise Howard

A HOLTS man with skin cancer has been given extended life by a new drug.

Charlie Jones (24) was told he had only hours to live after having emergency surgery on tumours that had spread to a kidney and a lung.

But doctors at The Christie Hospital, Manchester, decided to try him on a drug, which has only just become available, called Vemurafenib.

He responded almost immediately and now Charlie feels like “his old self”.

He is even making plans to marry his girl friend of over three years, Louise Howard.

Charlie, who previously worked at a window-fitting firm in Oldham, started the medication on March 1 and takes four tablets at 12-hour intervals on a long-term basis.

“I had no choice but to try the drug so I wasn’t worried,” he said.

“My family were told I didn’t have long to live — I was lucky to survive the surgery.

“Now I feel like I can get back to my old life but I just have to be careful about the things I do. I can’t work.”

But Charlie has urged others to go to the doctors if they find any odd lumps or notice moles changing shape.

He found a mole on the back of his head and was subsequently diagnosed with skin cancer in October, 2010.

Since then he has had a lump removed from his back, had surgery on the tumours and been through radiotherapy sessions.

He said: “It’s really important that people get lumps and moles checked out.

“I had a lump on my neck — I think it was from playing a lot of football outside. But I never got it checked out because I thought nothing of it.

“I didn’t go to the doctor’s for a year and by then it was too late.”

Charlie, who used to play for Springhead FC, is having a check up in two weeks when doctors will have a better idea of how the medication is working.

He said the staff at The Christie had been amazing and he couldn’t have asked for more support from them and from his family.

Vemurafenib was tested in a clinical trial that examined its impact on tumour size and survival in patients with advanced melanoma skin cancer that had spread to other parts of the body.

Researchers found that approximately half of the patients responded to the drug and that the overall survival rate in these patients was nearly 16 months, on average.