MARCIA SHEAN'S head is wrapped in iced towels and she is completely awake when she is put into what can most easily be described as an oven.
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It takes an hour for her body to heat up and lapse into hyperthermia, a medical emergency in other situations but in this case an attempt to lengthen her life.
This is a progressive form of cancer treatment that some medical experts believe will one day become standard. But it is a sad place to be.
''It feels like heat stroke,'' she says.
Friends of Mrs Shean have so far raised more than $20,000 for her treatment in an appliance nicknamed ''the pizza box''.
Only her head sticks out of it at one end so her husband Craig can change the cold towels around her head every 10 minutes as the temperature of the box rises to 67.7degrees Celsius.
Her core body temperature rises above the normal range to reach a top of 38.6degrees Celsius before she is attached to an intravenous drip of vitamin C.
She has had these three-hour treatments 11 times.
At Christmas, Mrs Shean, 56 and recently married, did not know she had cancer between her ribcage and lungs.
Her chances of survival are lousy. Half of the people with her form of cancer die within a year.
Only 5 per cent live for two years, but those who survive two years are a select group of people with a certain strand of the disease, and she is not one of them.
The Sheans recently sold the Coffee Cafe in Colbee Court in Phillip and moved to the Gold Coast where she has been treated in the pizza box.
Little did she know how loyal her customers were.
Former customer Jacque Gutterson is collecting money for a more extreme form of the treatment in Germany.
''When I was six-years old, our neighbours' house burnt down in the farming area where I grew up.
''But the community was tight and a new house was built,'' Mrs Gutterson said.
''I realised the same needed to happen for Marcia and Craig.
''But, in the city, people are often unaware of what is happening around them and miss the opportunity help out.''
Treatment and flights can cost as much as $40,000.
In Germany she will be given chemotherapy in conjunction with the hyperthermia treatment and she can go inside a box heated to 42degrees under sedation.
* A bank account has been set up through the Cancer Support Group ACT Eden Monaro's Own for tax deductable donations. Go to marciashean.webs.com to donate.
