Kimm Fletcher is going to die. The Milton mother of two has a deadly form of brain cancer and only has months to live.

It is with that urgency she found herself at Queen’s Park Wednesday with her Halton MPP, Conservative Ted Chudleigh, trying to get provincial Health Minister Deb Matthews to fund a cancer drug that may prolong her life.

But that cancer drug, Avastin, may not give her that extra time as recent studies have raised questions about its ability to help her live longer.

Fletcher, 41, has two children ages 7 and 9. She was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme in 2010 after feeling electric shocks shooting from her head to her left arm while she was sleeping in bed with her kids.

“If this gives me an extra year to live, to love my husband and play with my children, I want that opportunity,” she said in an interview. “Even if it’s too late for me to get funding, I want the next person in my situation to be able to live a longer life.”

If Fletcher lived in British Columbia, Saskatchewan or Manitoba, she would not have gone to the legislature to plead her case. That’s because those provinces fund Avastin for the treatment of the same brain cancer Fletcher lives with.

“It would be wonderful if we had a national program to cover drugs like this, so we didn’t have these situations where one province would cover it and others might not,” Matthews told reporters after meeting with Fletcher.

Fletcher left Wednesday’s meeting with the health minister without funding for the drug. Her plight shines a light on the process of publicly funding treatment.

Health Canada and its provincial counterparts follow a rigorous system that decides which drugs become free to patients.

First, the drug must be approved by Health Canada. It gave the green light to Avastin for the treatment of colorectal cancer, when used in concert with chemotherapy, as well as for the type of brain cancer affecting Fletcher.

From there the decision goes to a committee that reviews drugs and recommends whether the provinces should fund them. Then the province follows a similar process. The province has twice reviewed, and twice rejected, Avastin.

“Overall there was poor data, and therefore a great amount of uncertainty around whether this treatment significantly improved survival overall for patients with gioblastoma multiforme,” said ministry spokesperson Samantha Grant.

But that left problems that have plagued drugs such as Avastin, available for free in some provinces while not in others.

Since 2011, the pan-Canadian Oncology Drug Review was set up to deal with that particular problem, specifically for cancer treatments.

The province and the pan-Canadian agency evaluate drugs on several fronts: a comprehensive review of the scientific data, patient perspectives and what a given drug means to their lives and a cost-effectiveness analysis.

Fletcher’s six-month treatment with Avastin costs $48,000. As of Wednesday night, she had raised nearly $46,000.

But what is life worth? The province and the pan-Canadian agency determine that through a cost analysis.

If, for example, a drug has a side effect that might require hospitalization in a certain percentage of patients, that is given a dollar value in the costs column. If the treatment keeps patients out of the hospital for longer periods, that is given a dollar value in the savings column.

Those savings and costs are then added up, with the total becoming a factor in the decision to fund a drug.

Avastin has had some difficulties of late.

A recent study by Mark Gilbert of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas showed Avastin didn’t prolong life in brain cancer patients when compared to a placebo in newly diagnosed patients. Fletcher’s cancer has recurred, which is what the drug is approved for in Canada.

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And Health Canada issued a warning to physicians in May about rare cases of flesh-eating diseases in patients being treated by Avastin.

But Fletcher believes even if there is a chance at a longer life, the province should step up. Even if it is false hope. Because that may be all she has left.