A CANCER sufferer is urging fellow patients to fight for life-prolonging drugs after beginning her own course of treatment.

Linda Gordon has begun her first month of the drug Tarceva after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer 16 months ago.

Mrs Gordon has been forced to meet the £2,500 for a month's supply herself after the Bromley Primary Care Trust (PCT) refused to fund the drug.

The former pharmaceuticals worker is now on the brink of launching a legal battle against the trust's decision.

The mother-of-two said: "The pain is definitely getting better.

"My back and sides don't hurt so much and my cough has improved a lot.

"I do feel angry though. Ideally I would have started it months ago. I feel like I'm saying I told you so' to the PCT.

"The fact I am responding to it so well shows I should have been given the chance to start them a lot earlier."

Mrs Gordon's case is being handled by law firm Irwin Mitchell, which recently won an appeal allowing breast cancer sufferer Ann Marie Rogers, from Swindon, to be treated with the drug Herceptin.

Tarceva, which was developed in America and released in 2004, works by blocking tumour cell growth.

A spokesman for Irwin Mitchell said: "We continue to fight for the right for Linda to have this drug, which was prescribed by her doctor but denied by those which manage budgets."

Although the firm is urgently trying to get a court date set, Mrs Gordon says she may have to fund a second month of treatment herself in the meantime.

Mrs Gordon, of Southborough Lane, Bromley, said: "I think it is important everyone gets a chance to try it.

"I'm absolutely determined to continue this treatment and I'll stop at nothing to get it.

"Not everyone will respond as well to Tarceva as I have but people deserve to be given a chance."