Adelaide cancer treatment keeps Hobart man flying
Every three weeks, Lyndon Beard flies to Adelaide for treatment at the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer. What started as a clinical trial is now keeping him alive.
Lyndon Beard was in his mid-40s when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer (aka colorectal cancer) via a routine colonoscopy in 2018.
He underwent successful surgery in his hometown of Hobart, but a year later the follow-up scans revealed the cancer had metastasised to his liver – and eventually it spread to his lungs.
“I had a variety of different chemo treatments locally here in Hobart and at each of those check-in points with scans, nothing was really working in the way it needed to,” Beard said.
At this stage, with the gold-standard chemotherapy treatments exhausted, his only hope was to find a relevant clinical trial and try a novel drug therapy.
Those three or four months of waiting in limbo were full of “lots of unknowns, lots of stress and anxiety,” he said.
Then he received a phone call to join a trial at the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer.
“They contacted me and said, would I be interested in coming across to Adelaide? And I was like, yeah, I’ll go wherever I need to go to get the treatment!
“I was stepping very much into an unknown and had no understanding of how long the trial would run for, so I was very anxious [and] excited at the same time.”
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Since December 2021, Beard has received an infusion every three weeks of trastuzumab deruxtecan, a targeted cancer therapy that delivers chemotherapy directly into cancer cells to kill them.
“The initial results were a dramatic reduction [although] it was never going to cure me,” he said.
“But the trial proves that I had a significant reduction in the monitored tumours that I had on my lungs.”
The work of the teams at the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer is supported by Flinders Foundation, which provides a vital link between researchers, healthcare professionals and the community to ensure disease prevention, innovative treatments and exceptional care are always within reach.
“Our mission is to provide hope and exceptional care without exception, no matter who you are, or where you live – because we believe everyone deserves a fighting chance,” said Ross Verschoor, executive director of the Foundation.
“Stories like Lyndon’s, who is one of a number of patients from interstate and overseas who are on a clinical trial run from the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer, remind us why our work matters, and why community support is so critical to make research discoveries which lead to better outcomes for people with cancer.”
Beard’s main tumours are now stable, while his oncology team at Flinders are keeping a close eye on the ones within his lungs.
His treatment is ongoing while he can tolerate it, provided without cost to his family by the drug company now that the trial is completed. The company also pays for his flights and hotels in Adelaide.
On treatment days, Beard’s wife, Melita, stays in Hobart with their two children, aged 14 and 17, however, she goes with him to hear the results of the three-monthly scans.
Their children are, according to Beard, “pretty resilient kids and the older they’ve gotten, the more so they are”.
“One thing that I’ve learned from all of this is to slow life down a lot and make sure that we’ve created those lasting memories with our kids as often as we can, whether it be through travel experiences or different things.”
Fighting cancer has also made him reassess his work-life balance.
“I got diagnosed at the start of 2018 and worked for probably three years through that, then around COVID time, I realised that I had all my priorities wrong and I just needed to focus on me,” said Beard, who was in operational management in the health and telecommunications industries.
“I spent the best part of a couple of years not working at all and about 18 months ago, I got back to work on a part-time basis.”
He is now a business development manager for North Hobart Cricket Club, where he played cricket as a junior and where his son now plays.
“I sort of found my little niche job, if you like, that keeps the brain stimulated in amongst everything else going on in life,” he said.
Today is World Cancer Day and the theme ‘United by Unique’ highlights the importance of person-centred cancer care.
Beard said the team at Flinders is “just brilliant” in terms of the medical care they provide him and their genuine concern for his wellbeing.
“I come back and they ask me, how did that event go, or how did that weekend go?
“They’re certainly invested in me as a patient and that makes the trip much easier, too. It’s personalised for sure.”
He has now completed 51 rounds of treatment and is mindful of the toll on staff that comes from working with seriously ill, and oftentimes dying, cancer patients.
“I’m sure it’s very rewarding, but it would also be tinged with, I’m sure, a lot of sadness at times too,” he said.
Beard has mixed emotions about being the last surviving participant in his clinical trial and what it means for cancer patients in the future.
“When I do think about being in a trial, I think about maybe they’re learning something from me that will be helpful to others, for sure.
“For the most part, [my cancer is] stabilised, so it’s onwards and upwards for as long as I can.
“I’m just grateful to be doing something that, ultimately, is keeping me alive – and hopefully there’s a long, long road still to go.”
Learn more about the Flinders Centre for Innovation in Cancer.
