Sam's Cancer Fund

Hi everyone,

And welcome!

I have started this page for my partner Sam, who was diagnosed with Stage 4 Bowel cancer in 2021. At the time, we had a 1 and a half year old and I was 7 months pregnant with our second, we were in the chaotic, tired, magical bliss that is a young family. When I looked into Sam's eyes after the initial diagnosis, I knew we had to say goodbye to normality as we shifted into our new existence. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

We took it on, together, and for me, he was going to get better, that was it.

Those who know Sam, know how dedicated he has been to healing and increasing his chance of survival. His determination, commitment and courage blow me away, every day.

We are now raising money so that Sam can access life extending (and sometimes saving) immunotherapies and other treatments, which aren’t available through the NHS. Thanks in advance for your love and generosity, which I hold in my heart and carry through life. Sam’s story below…

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I have stage 4 bowel cancer and the NHS can no longer offer me anything curative. I’m trying to raise money to have cutting edge treatments that could give me a precious few more years with my partner and young sons.

Can you help us? I used to live for my future and had a mind full of ambitions, dreams and plans. Now all I want is more time so that my young sons remember their Dad. Sebby, my youngest, has just turned 2, so I am desperate to live long enough for him to have lucid memories of me. That’s all I live for now, and I wish I could hope for more. Maybe with your help, I can.

At 38 years old, 2021 was the year I was about to launch into the 2nd half of my life as a fully fledged adult. I had found a partner I felt lucky enough to want to spend the rest of my life with (and with a bit of luck she, me). We already had one young son and were about to have a second; all I'd ever wanted was to be a Dad, and now my dreams had come true.

However, during lockdown we faced great difficulty as many self-employed people and those with small businesses did. During this time, we decided to buy a wreck of a house through auction, at the same time as embarking on an MA and new career - all of which pushed my stress levels to new highs. It was during this time I began to feel digestive symptoms and fatigue which I'd never felt before. Moving to a new area at the same time as Covid restrictions were in place made registering and speaking to a GP very difficult. When I finally managed to speak to one over the phone to tell him of my suspicions he categorically declared: “you are too young to have cancer”.

After I finally managed to have a colonoscopy, I was ushered into a room by anxious nurses and shown photos of a tumour in my lower colon. I began to hyperventilate and collapsed onto the floor. Lauren, who was heavily pregnant, had to come and escort me home. This was the worst moment and day of my life. Little did I know I was soon to have many new ‘worst days’. I hope that no one reading this ever has to experience what I have.

Later meetings confirmed that not only was there a tumour threatening to protrude through my colorectal margin, there was a 20mm tumour in my liver and a possible tiny lesion in my lung. I was already stage 4, there is no stage 5. Nevertheless, a letter from the colorectal surgeon later stated I was still at a 'curative stage' despite being stage 4. I held onto those words for a long time. From that moment on, I knew I had to do everything I could to get better.

In the intervening two and a half years, through the NHS, I have had:

I should have spent less than 3 weeks in hospital due to planned surgeries. Due to the complications, further procedures, and extended recovery times, I have spent nearly 3 months there.

We haven't merely been relying on the NHS to give myself a fighting chance. I've been on vegan/cold pressed juice, low GI and keto diets; alternating according to what my weight loss and the low fibre limitations of now having an ileostomy bag will permit. We have also become amateur researchers in this time, extending my life becoming my primary occupation. I have also adopted a 'metabolic approach' to starving the cancer cells. This involves taking up to 50 natural supplements and off-label drugs everyday - as well as mistletoe injections, high-dose IV Vitamin C and various cancer pathway blocking tinctures. We hope our efforts and expenditure has been making a marginal difference.

We have been through so many highs and lows, lights at the end of the tunnel being suddenly extinguished by cruel blind-sidings. You'd think that getting scan results has become easier, but in truth, it gets harder every time. The anxiety I feel in the days and minutes leading up to those scan result calls are indescribably unbearable. I role play with myself, trying to prepare to be able to handle the news whatever it is - and even though I try to be realistic, my instinctive hope can’t stop running away with the dream - that I might still live to see old age, like most people do. One tries to make oneself feel grateful or appreciate that there is always someone somewhere experiencing something worse. Only thinking of a child going through the pain I have is worse. Truthfully, I still feel like a child myself, being forced to face my imminent mortality, with medical people I don’t know, coldly and professionally. Whilst my inner child has been unable to cope, my own children serve as an ever-present reminder that I am in fact an adult that pretends to cope in public. How Lauren copes is beyond me, especially when I go into hospital and she suddenly has to do everything on her own: work, the house, the kids, at the same time as dealing with the prospect of me not making it out alive. The latest blow has been that as soon as I recovered from lung surgery to remove 3 small tumours in my right lung (and the subsequent pneumothorax/collapsed lung), they found some new tiny spots on my left lung. This means that all that is now being offered by the NHS is palliative chemotherapy. The prognosis for people with advanced cancers being treated with systemic chemotherapy is extremely poor. The amount of time these drugs may extend one's life is unclear, if at all, whilst the quality of life they degrade, substantial. One third line drug they are offering me only extends lives by a couple of months. That's right, potentially a whole 2 months more of life.

Alarmingly there is no collective global effort to find a cure for cancer. The research through to the licensing of treatments is a torturously slow process and can take decades, especially in the UK. It will certainly be too late for me unless I seek treatments that already exist, in countries where they are slightly more progressive than they are here.

I am currently trying to raise money for five things specifically, but may need further treatments if, and when these are successful:

Total: £54,500 approx

* If anyone would like more detailed information about any of the above treatments, please message us.

Most people don’t know what to say or how to help. It is difficult to think of tasks to delegate, when we ourselves are diving from one treatment to the next, finding hope again as we climb the ladder during brief recovery phases, only to be hit by another wave of bad news from a roll of the dice which slips us back down the long snake to square one again. So now we do need help, and this is a way you can. It has taken me a long time of not wanting to, to finally be in a situation where we feel like we have to.

Only help if you are able to of course, otherwise please share with anyone you think is. I am also passionate about helping others going through similar nightmares (especially those with young children), and in campaigning for an emergency global collective to find a cure. If anyone is interested or wants to talk to me about either of those things, please drop us a message. Thank you for connecting with me at whatever stage of my life you've helped make more fun and purposeful - talking, listening and laughing with you all has been my life’s bliss.

(and pat yourself on the back if you made it to the end. My tragi-comic autobiography will be out in hardback next spring, if the immunotherapy works... X S:))