Please help me raise funds for cancer treatment
Donation protected
Lecturer for over 20 years and single mum to 2 grown up boys. I need help raising funds for life extending and potentially lifesaving cancer treatment not available on the NHS.
Dear all, I'm appealing to everyone to help me raise funds for treatments for my cancer which has now metastasised. A few people will know my story from last year when I was diagnosed with cervical cancer that had spread into abdominal lymph nodes. After undergoing treatments (chemotherapy, radiotherapy and brachytherapy) the results appeared to be successful beating the cancer into remission and producing 1 clear scan after another. Sadly 14 months after the treatment ended 2 lymph nodes in my chest have tested positive for the same cervical cancer meaning that it has metastasised away from its original site, therefore curative treatment is no longer an option, and my oncologist has given me a 30% survival rate after five years. I was told the two lymph nodes could be treated with radiotherapy, but the disease would come back and judging from the route taken would probably travel firstly to my neck before reoccurring and developing tumours on organs in my chest. No systemic treatment is being offered on the NHS and I have been told that only when the cancer flares up again will be offered a 1 time only treatment consisting of a 4 chemo combo with NHS immunotherapy, this treatment will not be curative but will tackle only tumours flaring up at that moment meaning any subsequent tumours developing afterwards would only be treated with radiotherapy until that stops working too.
This came as devastating news, and I was really shocked by how little could be done to contain the disease, according to my 2nd opinion professor, cervical cancer is the ‘Cinderella cancer’ with less options available to patients. I felt concerned that the professionals were being inactive in preventing future spreading and started looking for methods that might change the course of the disease in my future. After setting to work looking into treatments maybe passed by the FDA in the US that haven't yet reached the UK, I found regulated clinics in Germany and Switzerland offering Dendritic Cell Therapy as a treatment for metastasised cancer. I have found a clinic in Munich offering this treatment for €18,000 which I believe is approximately £15,000. I am now appealing for help to get to Germany to get this treatment.
Dendritic Cell Therapy is a process where some of the patient’s immune cells (dendritic cells) are harvested and treated so that they can recognise the tumour cells specific to that patient. They are then reintroduced into the patient where they prime the patient’s immune system to target and kill the cancer cells. This creates an environment where freely moving tumour cells are identified and removed by the immune system before they can attach to other sites such as the lungs, brain and liver. The sooner this treatment is applied the better the success rates – I have read cases where the cancer went into remission following this treatment and also that the dendritic cells actively continued fighting the cancer for long afterwards. This type of targeted immunotherapy is the future and will be coming down the line on the NHS but isn’t here yet. Going to Germany for this treatment is my best shot of extending my life or kicking the can down the road far enough until this becomes available on the NHS. Something else I might need help with if the lymph nodes in my chest aren’t obliterated by the radiotherapy includes proton beam therapy as no further treatment will now be offered if the radiotherapy hasn’t been successful.
For anyone else finding themselves in the same position as me, please check out the links at the end. There is a more proactive way of dealing with metastasised cancer than waiting for the tumours to go stage 4. I think we all, me certainly, go about feeling a little immortal, but we aren’t and even making decisions about whether or not to take on extra stress comes with risks that probably we just don’t need and really, we just need to make more time for ourselves, friends and family. Thank you for any help, Jules x
Links:
Gansauge system with Lanex-DC
IASO clinic uses Lanex-DC system
Cancers that can be treated with DC
Organizer
Jules Pettitt
Organizer
England