A WOMAN with terminal cancer has launched a campaign to get Government funding restored for a drug which gave her months of extra life.

Former nurse Linda Johnson says she’s too far gone now for the Government cuts to cancer drug funding to affect her.

But that isn’t stopping her campaigning so that others can enjoy the same chance of a few vital, extra months.

Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2007 and underwent a lumpectomy, mastectomy and even had ribs removed and replaced with prosthetic ones, as she battled the disease, which spread to her skin, uterus and chest wall.

She tried three different medicines before the drug, Eribulin, succeeded in stopping the cancer getting any worse.

However, the £3,000-a-year Eribluin injections are one of 25 cancer treatments for which the Tory/Lib Dem coalition government has cut NHS funding.

Linda, 57, of Earl Mountbatten Drive, Billericay, a former ward sister at Basildon Hospital, said: “I had Eribulin for six months and it was amazing.

“It dramatically increased my time.

One person in three people is going to get cancer, and that will increase to one in two in the future.

“The Government is being very short-sighted. Who is going to even make the drugs we need if they’ve got no one to sell them to?

“I’m very open about the fact that cancer is going to kill me, but I’m not ready to go yet. I have a very active life. At the moment I’m living with cancer, I’m not dying with it. This is what these drugs are doing for me.

“It might only give me an extra few months, but you try telling my husband or my children I’m not worth that.”

Linda discovered a lump in her breast in November 2007.

After intensive treatment, she was given the all-clear only to learn, two years later, it was back.

A mastectomy and chemotherapy got rid of the cancer again, but it has come back every year since.

Linda has now been told it will inevitably spread to her lungs, liver or brain and kill her.

She says telling her husband, Martin, 51, and children Daniel, 34, and Amy, 31, was the hardest part, and admitted: “I’m not a fighter and I’m not brave.”

She plans to hand her MP, John Baron a petition, with what she hopes will be at least 10,000 names on it.

Linda added: “I would like to think I could make a difference. I’m doing this for other people, as I know it is too late for me.

“I get private healthcare because my husband has it through work, but I feel so strongly that just because you can pay for treatment, it doesn’t mean you should have to. It’s wrong.”

To sign the petition, visit http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/72199.