Two years ago on March 31 2017, I received the news from my Oncologist that my melanoma had spread to my brain. Two years on, I am hugely thankful to still be here and very much living life to the full. My latest scans show that my melanoma is stable (good news for any stage 4 cancer patient) and my current targeted treatment Debrafenib/Trametinib which I take in tablet format twice daily 12 hours apart continues to work 16 months on. I am hugely grateful to all of the amazing melanoma team at the Royal Marsden Hospital led by my Oncologist Professor James Larkin who continue to look after me so well.
For the past couple of months I have had the feeling, I am living on borrowed time, which is probably hard to relate to if you don’t have an incurable disease but fellow stage 4 cancer patients will resonate with this feeling. In the run up to the January scans, I became a bit obsessed with the fact the current treatment I am receiving works on average for 10 to 12 months and I have now exceeded that which is good news. My Oncologist reminds me that for some patients it can work for years and often patients have treatments in a different sequence. For the latest scans I felt much calmer until the morning of the results when I always feel nervous and it was a huge relief to hear everything was stable. For now I am continuing the kick ass enjoy every day mantra and getting on with my life as I know how quickly the situation could change.
It’s been an exciting month and one of the highlights was when David and I were invited to visit the Francis Crick Institute (https://www.crick.ac.uk/) to have a tour and see where some of the research that the fundraising we have been doing is taking place. The Crick is a biomedical research institute who works to understand why disease develops and to find new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat a range of illnesses including cancer, heart disease, stroke, infection and neurogenerative disease. There are over 1200 scientists working there and the building is amazing.
Dr Lewis Au, Clinical Fellow for the Royal Marsden who is part of Professor Larkin’s team gave us a tour of the Crick and what an impressive building it is. As it is open plan the premise is very much on the collaboration between all of the scientists working there. The current research is looking to understand immune related toxicities by multifaceted profiling. We were taken to the wet lab where the scientists are examining specific tissue samples of tumours. We met one of the scientists on the team Alan (also Scottish) who showed us samples taken of a large tumour found in the kidney. He mentioned that previously they would take one biopsy from the tumour but in this example, the tumour was sliced into four sections with up to 20 samples taken from each section, e.g. 80 Nr samples in total. They are then doing specific genomic and immune profiling of the patient and the tumour which takes place in the dry lab where the analysis takes place. The goal of the research is to better understand how tumours develop as they metastasize (spread) around the body. In the context of immunotherapy, they hope to develop a panel of biomarkers to identify patients at risk of immunotherapy toxicity and develop supplementary/complimentary treatments for prevention and treatment of toxicity. As a patient who has experienced severe toxicity to my liver when I had immunotherapy this research is particularly personal to me. The whole experience was really quite fascinating and made me question if I had gone into the correct career. We loved it and it was the highlight of my month and a big thank you to Dr Lewis Au for hosting us his scientist colleague Alan who was explaining everything to us and it was lovely to see Dr Samra Turajlic too.
My 2 year anniversary with no booze is on April 10. I can hardly believe it and am often asked if I miss it. The honest answer is no with the exception of the occasional summer night out when it’s warm and a glass of rose is tempting. I know I was probably drinking too much before my stage 4 melanoma diagnosis and from a health perspective I definitely feel better. I am now the one at the party watching everyone else when they have had one too many knowing all too well I have been there many a time. I can still party with the best of them and I now remember the repeated nonsense that everyone else talks at 1am but for now I am happy with my clear alcohol free head and trying out the latest alcohol free cocktails on a night out.
As well as monthly appointments with the Oncology team I also have check ups with the Dermatologist every 6 months. Last week my check up proved quite interesting. As I have mentioned before, I have developed 2 vitiligo patches on my face and this is a known side effect of my melanoma treatment. The Dermatologist has also noticed that some of the moles on my body have disappeared and some have become de-pigmented and lighter. The immunotherapy or the targeted treatment could have caused this and it shows the immune system response against antigens shared by the normal melanocytes and melanoma cells. I was also sent for follow up photographs so that this can be compared against the photos from 2 years ago when I started treatment and also moving forward.
The Shomelanoma team has started training for the next big challenge The Welsh 3000s which is coming up at the end of July. It looks TOUGH 15 mountains over 3000 feet in just over 48 hours with some scrambling…….. After the first training walk last week of 20km and the sore legs the next day there is a long way to go. More to come ………
We also have a big team signed up for the Royal Parks half marathon in October. This is the one Dave is attempting to run in under 2 hours. His park run training is commencing soon plus mentor guidance from his cousin Matt who will also be running. If you would like to join us please let me know we’ll be having a party after this one!
https://www.justgiving.com/teams/shomelanoma
As always thanks again for all your wonderful support, as we move into the warmer weather please take care to protect your skin slap on the factor 50 even when its cloudy and check your skin for any changes in moles and go to see the GP. Better to be safe than sorry. Melanoma is a nasty disease and even although there have been huge advances in treatment there are still 7 people losing their lives every day in the UK alone. May is melanoma awareness month so more to come next month.
Shomelanoma 