THE partner of a woman whose life was prolonged long enough by expensive cancer drugs to see her grandchildren born has called for an end to the NHS ‘postcode lottery’.

Susan Tyler, of Stoke Abbott, died 10 days ago aged 62, but thanks to the drugs she lived long enough to see her grandchildren born.

Her partner of 15 years welder Gary Vardy said he wanted her legacy to be all cancer patients getting the drugs without a fight.

Susan was 58 when she was diagnosed with kidney cancer.

She was told there was only one treatment – a £30,000 a year drug called sutent – but she couldn’t have it.

But despite reeling from the devastating news, care assistant Susan and Mr Vardy began a three-month campaign for the right to have the drug.

They spent hours researching the drug, contacting doctors, drug companies, politicians and even the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which is the government’s clinical drugs advisory body.

Mr Vardy said: “Susan was reeling from the diagnosis and devastated that she wouldn’t live long enough to see her grandchildren born.

“Then they told her she couldn’t have the only treatment there was available that might have given her that time. It left us without hope.

“I was disgusted. I’ve paid national insurance all my life and so had Susan.

“They said the drug cost between £25,000 and £30,000 a year and that basically her life wasn’t worth that.

“She was one of life’s lovely characters, she never had a bad word to say about anybody.”

His stack of more than 300 pages of begging letters and research bare witness to how hard the couple fought for the right to life. But the breakthrough came when they bumped into a man from Broadwindsor at the oncology unit who also had kidney cancer. Even though his disease was further progressed than Susan’s he was being given the drug.

“When we found that out we had more of a lever and they were struggling to refuse us.

“And when we found this man from the next village who was being given the drug we knew they had to change their minds.

“Susan had her kidney removed but it had already spread to her lymph system. They gave her about a year to live. There is no treatment but with sutent they can prolong life, they don’t say for how long, but it gave Susan the gift of life for another three-and-a-half years.”

And it was a gift she treasured every single day, said Mr Vardy.

“She was so happy to be able to she her grandchildren born. Her son Adam married and they couldn’t have children naturally and had had five or six IVF treatments. It was finally last July when his wife gave birth to twin girls.

“It gave Susan a real boost when the babies were born and Susan got to hold them before she died.”

“The drug not only gave her more time it gave her a good quality of life in that time.

“It was only after Christmas when she began to go downhill and the disease had progressed too far for the drug to help.

“Each day she had was a precious gift.”

Mr Vardy said it still makes him angry to read that other people are not being given the same chance as Susan had to see important milestones in their families’ lives.

“It seems quite unjust to me that what the drug did for Susan is still being refused.”

Her funeral is in Stoke Abbott at 2pm on Friday.

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