Finally – Meaningful Press Attention for Off-Label Cancer Drugs – November 2016

I wrote about off-label drugs a few posts ago. This article in today’s Times is very encouraging: 

By |November 7th, 2016|Blog|0 Comments|

FIVE YEARS ON FROM A GRIM DIAGNOSIS – WHY IS IT SO POINGNANT? November 2016

I keep having to remind myself that I am coming up to my 5 year anniversary of being diagnosed with Stage 1V Breast Cancer. It is not something to wildly celebrate but it is something to acknowledge with huge gratefulness, along with a feeling of un-realness, since 80% of people diagnosed with Stage 1V breast cancer die within 5 years. That is quite a sobering statistic. My condition at best is described as “treatable” and at worst “terminal”. When my oncologist told me recently that I was only one of a handful of his patients alive with Stage 4 after 5 years – he really meant it – you could count them on one hand.I have journeyed through all the mental and psychological “sorting out” of preparing for an early death, and now I don’t think about it too often (perhaps because I have come to terms with the possibility). Yet, when I do think about it, again, it feels really surreal, almost dreamlike. It comes and goes, fleeting across my radar from time to time- times like now – a 5 year marker.I have tried very hard to not define myself by my cancer, and take new steps every day. I have been having treatment every 3 weeks at my clinic in London. This month we have been able to make the rather momentus decision to have 2 out of my 3 treatments at home. My home treatments will be given by a 5 minute injection in my leg (it stings like a bee!) – instead of intravenously, as before. To put it simply – instead of having 18 treatments per year at my clinic, I will now have only 6, and the […]

By |November 1st, 2016|Blog|0 Comments|