Paul Henderson hoping non-FDA approved cancer drug is ‘silver bullet’

Watch the video above: Paul Henderson hoping non-FDA approved cancer drug is ‘silver bullet’. Mark McAllister reports. 

TORONTO – Paul Henderson is hoping a new, non-FDA approved drug is a “silver bullet” in his fight against cancer.

During a routine checkup in 2009, doctors discovered his stomach was “full of tumours.”

He was to undergo chemotherapy but didn’t think it would work so he travelled south of the border to Bethesda, Maryland where the National Institute of Health was conducting a trial on a new drug called Ibrutinib.

Henderson says, by that point, the tumours were beginning to disfigure him.

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“I was, you know, clogged up all over the place. In my back, my face, my groin, under my armpits and I had lost 25 pounds. I was down to 160. I had a tumour the size of a grapefruit in my stomach, my spleen was twice the size,” he said. “Even the nurses have told me since that they thought a year ago that I was on my way out.”

But since taking the drug, his health has turned around. He’s gained 25 pounds (and is now back to his NHL-size of 184 pounds), and each round of blood work reveals less cancerous results. His tumour too is “almost gone entirely,” he said. But the recovery is still a lengthy process; he works out daily, gets blood work every six weeks and has to travel to Bethesda every three months.

He wants to believe the drug is a “silver bullet” but admits that it is “too early to tell.”

“But we don’t know, maybe it’s only good for three years, four years, who knows,” he said. “That’s the way we live life, we take today, we try to live it the best way we can, and if tomorrow shows up well we’ll take a shot at tomorrow.”

Henderson played professional hockey for 20 years, with ten of those in the NHL for the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was the winning goal in the 1972 Summit Series against the Soviet Union however that brought him national recognition.

– With files from Mark McAllister