A Year On...

It is exactly a year ago today that I received the diagnosis of bowel cancer. Wow! What a year it’s been. After three lines of failed chemo treatment, sepsis, multiple stays in hospital, I didn’t think I’d still be here. But, I am, and I am very grateful for that. I have so much to be thankful for with my wonderful friends, family, nurses and doctors. I’m just taking each day as it comes and ‘what will be, will be’.

I also had some news at the weekend from my consultant. He had, with little hope, written to a drug company which produces an immunotherapy drug that is unavailable on the NHS, asking them about the possibility of supplying it exclusively for me to try on a named patient basis. He was expecting a, “No,” but they have said, “Yes”. A course of treatment is really expensive (in the hundreds of thousands), but apparently they will supply it free of charge! There is little evidence of any effectiveness of this drug on bowel cancer, but it’s a door of hope when we had accepted that there was nothing else left to try. I’m not sure when the treatment will begin, but hopefully soon. I hope that the side effects are minimal as I’ve been feeling a lot better this last week or two.