Natalie’s Cancer Treatment

*UPDATE* 22nd May 2023

It’s now been a year since I set up this fundraising page and safe to say, it hasn’t turned out to be the year that we imagined.

Firstly, thank you so much for all of your kind donations as they have been enabled me to continue on the Immunotherapy (Avastin) which is not covered by the NHS, for a year now. And it does seem to be very effective at keeping things at bay. However, I’ve almost exhausted my funds, which means I won’t be able to continue with the treatment any longer.

Originally the plan was to undergo 6 rounds of chemo with the immunotherapy as an added extra in the hope it would target the cancer in my peritoneum enough that I would be approved for surgery to remove it altogether. This didn’t go to plan though, the treatment was helping but just wasn’t effective enough as there was still too much disease there for the surgeon to agree to operate successfully. So we carried on with chemo/immunotherapy for a few months, however, my last scan showed evidence of Mets within my lungs, which is obviously not good. But it’s not the be all or end all, it just means that surgery is definitely off the cards, as this lowers the success rate of it significantly and to put it simply, there are better candidates available.

Following this, my Oncologist has been looking into clinical trials to refer me to. I haven’t heard back from any as of yet, so in the mean time I’m just continuing on my current treatment and we don’t really have an end date in sight. So it’s very frustrating and repetitive but if anyone wishes to help me out, then please make a donation again! However big or small I will be eternally grateful.

Thank you for taking the time to read,

Natalie x

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April 2022

I’ve set up this fundraiser to help with costs of cancer treatment that isn’t available to me through the NHS. 

I was diagnosed with bowel cancer in January 2021 at the age of 26, and underwent surgery to remove the right side of my bowel (Laparascopic right Hemicolectomy) where the tumour was. The intention of this surgery was to cure me, however unfortunately this was not the case. During my surgery, cancer was discovered to be present in my liver (which was removed during surgery) and also in my peritoneum, which was more concerning as cancer of this kind is considered rare. 

Following this news I was referred to one of the few peritoneal specialists in the UK as there is an operation available specifically targeted at cancer of the peritoneum. However, this surgery is a very major and lengthy operation and also involves removal of both my ovaries, due to this being a common place the cancer can spread to. Obviously being so young, undergoing surgery of that kind is not a decision to be taken lightly by myself or the specialists. I was also administered 3 months of chemotherapy, which was really effective, to the point that after I completed the chemo, the cancer was barely visible to the human eye. 

The CT scan that showed this was sent to the specialists and I was informed by them that they don’t believe it’s necessary to put me through the operation as they can barely see anything, and due to be me being so young and the prospect of losing my ovaries before I’ve had the chance to have children. 

I was then booked in for surveillance CT scans every 6 months and was in the meantime, clear to return to work! This was a huge blessing as I’d been off work since March 2020 due to the pandemic! 

I had my surveillance scan in January 2022 and unfortunately it showed that the cancer in my peritoneum had developed and grown. My consultant contacted the specialists again straight away in the hope that they would agree to perform the surgery, as chemo was not going to cure it. 

However, we contacted every specialist in the UK and even some from abroad and I was rejected for surgery by all of them as they believed the cancer is too progressed for them to do an effective job. They believe it’s too grueling a surgery to be put through when they’re not confident it can have the desired effect or cure me. 

Following this frustrating back and forth of rejections and waiting around, I am starting another course of chemotherapy which will be more intense and stronger than last time. The aim of it is to shrink the cancer to a size where I can be reassessed for this specialist surgery afterwards and hopefully approved if successful! 

So the money I’m trying to raise is for a medication that my oncologist has recommended, that I would have alongside my new course of chemo which has been proven to be effective, however it is not available on the NHS! This extra treatment will cost approximately £300 per cycle and I’m having 6 cycles of Chemo, which I would have alongside it. There is also a possibility that if the specialists in the UK don’t agree to surgery, I may have to seek help from abroad, in which case I could end up having to pay for surgery somewhere else, which would be costly! 

Any extra money from donations I will use to help towards costs while I’m off work, for example, fuel for getting to all my appointments and food, anything I may need! 

Congratulations if you read to the end of all that and anything you can donate to help I would be immensely grateful for! 

Lots of love ❤️