Grit Diaries
Julie Randall · 44 min
Given months to live with Stage 4 metastatic melanoma spread across multiple organs, Julie Randall refused every 'no' — including a closed clinical trial — and became Patient 71, helping bring immunotherapy to Australia.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Julie Randall was 50 years old, fit, training for a state-level touch football tournament, and practising gratitude on her drive to work when something shifted. She couldn't find the words to speak. Within hours, she'd had a seizure at her workplace. Within days, she had a diagnosis: stage 4 metastatic melanoma spread across her brain, lungs, pancreas, liver, and lymph nodes. The doctor said chemotherapy would buy her three months, nothing more. When she told her daughters she had cancer, she made them a promise before she could think: she would not die.
That promise became her anchor. Chemotherapy wasn't going to save her, so Julie hunted for clinical trials overseas. For three and a half months, a trial in Portland, Oregon told her no. Not American. Not in their system. The trial was full. Then she read the Hippocratic Oath over the phone to someone at the drug company, and days later, they called her back. She became Patient 71, the 71st person accepted into an immunotherapy trial that taught her body's own immune system to fight the cancer. She stopped chemotherapy in secret to qualify. Her youngest daughter left her HSC and flew to Portland with her. Her husband tore himself apart flying between two countries and two daughters.
Nine months into treatment, with her marriage at breaking point and no more money to fly home, Julie's husband contacted the drug company and asked them to send the immunotherapy to Sydney. They did. Years of treatment followed. During menopause, lying in a hospital bed, Julie promised the universe she would write a book if she survived. She'd never been good at English, but she sat down and wrote 320 pages. On 60 Minutes, a PET scan showed she was cancer-free. The word cured became real.
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