Cancer is Pants! Help Our Mum
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We are 4 kids who live in Brighton, UK - Ella (age 18), Tom (age 16), William (age 14) and Ned (age 11).
Our Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 39. In January this year we found out that it had returned after a 4 year remission. It is now advanced, stage 4 breast cancer which has spread to her liver. Mum has now finished chemotherapy and has started hormone treatment. This will not be enough to keep mum here as long as we want her.
Mum has been doing hours and hours of research on alternative therapies to complement and enhance the conventional treatments offered in the UK, as well as different cancer treatments that are available in other countries. The trouble is these all cost A LOT of money.
We are trying to raise as much money as we can to contribute to the treatments that Mum needs now, and in the future. With all the donations recieved through gofundme and the cancer is pants website (www.cancerispants.co.uk) Mum has been able to go to Germany twice for hyperthermia treatment to her liver, intravenous vitamin C and the dendritic cell therapy. We need to keep going to make sure mum has access to the best treatments available.
We love our Mum and we need her here as long as possible. PLEASE help us.
If you want to read more about mums treatment and her story, visit: www.cancerispants.co.uk
Here's an excerpt from Mum's blog which explains more about some of the treatment, in particular Dendritic Cell Therapy :
"I have advanced breast cancer. This is treatable but not curable. In the UK at present there is a ‘ladder’ of treatments for people with advanced breast cancer. For me these are mainly chemotherapies or hormone therapies. I have estrogen receptive cancer and therefore there are hormone treatments which I can try as well as chemotherapies. In practice oncologists will work their way through these treatments until they start running out of options. At this point there may be trials that I might be eligible for – but at this point my future becomes more and more uncertain. As cancer is very clever it becomes resistant to treatments and so once I have had a treatment I cannot have it again and while a treatment may work for a while the expectation is that it will, at some point, become resistant and I will have to change treatments (assuming I have options left).
Chemotherapy weakens the immune system. Some of the most exciting developments in cancer treatments are happening in the field of immunotherapy. These basically look to strengthening the bodies own immunological response to cancer. For melenomas results have been amazing. In practice these approaches seek to both help the body’s immune system recognise the cancer (cancer stem cells are invisible to the immune system which make it so difficult for the body to put up an effective fight). They also use techniques which boost the body’s own T-cell – or fighter cells – so that they can overcome the cancer. (Please note this is a very layperson explanation).
Work on immunotherapies has been going on for years and now, with the work on melenoma, there is a concrete proof of concept demonstrating amazing results. Work on these therapies for other cancers are in trials (and not for all cancers) and are basically not available or will not be available to me now. Possibly this will change but whether there would be a trial and whether I would get on one is totally uncertain and do I really want to wait until I have run out of standard options and use this as a last chance option – even if it were available to me. What I have learnt from my intensive research since being diagnosed is that once you have stage IV cancer you cannot afford to sit around and hope. You have to absolutely be on top of your options and investigate every one. The time it takes for promising drugs to get through the trial, registration and the incorporation in standard treatment route is too long for people like me.
I have spent hours researching and from this I am convinced that dendritic cell therapy, an immunotherapy available only in a few clinics in Germany, Japan and Mexico is too promising not to have. It is a therapy that has shown best results when the cancer load is lowest and at an earlier stage in the cancers development, which is why I need to have it as soon after this first round of chemotherapy as possible.
Dendritic cell therapy involves the use of a personalised vaccine to retrain the immune system to recognise cancer cells as a threat to the body.
Dendritic cells are found in all blood vessels. These cells identify foreign substances, such as cancer cells in the body, process them and then help jump start the immune response to destroy them by bringing them to the attention of the T cells. Often the dendritic cells are not very effective with this process.
With Dendritic Cell Therapy, the patient's own dendritic cells are treated and modified to be able to specifically train the T cells to attack and kill all cancer cells that have the same foreign substance on their surface.
We are planning all sorts of FUND RAISING activities- please join in and help us raise the money- because one thing we all know for sure is that #cancerispants!!!
We will be forever grateful for anything you can give.
Louise, Rupert, Ella, Tom, William and Ned
You can keep up with my story here- www.cancerispants.co.uk
Our Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer aged 39. In January this year we found out that it had returned after a 4 year remission. It is now advanced, stage 4 breast cancer which has spread to her liver. Mum has now finished chemotherapy and has started hormone treatment. This will not be enough to keep mum here as long as we want her.
Mum has been doing hours and hours of research on alternative therapies to complement and enhance the conventional treatments offered in the UK, as well as different cancer treatments that are available in other countries. The trouble is these all cost A LOT of money.
We are trying to raise as much money as we can to contribute to the treatments that Mum needs now, and in the future. With all the donations recieved through gofundme and the cancer is pants website (www.cancerispants.co.uk) Mum has been able to go to Germany twice for hyperthermia treatment to her liver, intravenous vitamin C and the dendritic cell therapy. We need to keep going to make sure mum has access to the best treatments available.
We love our Mum and we need her here as long as possible. PLEASE help us.
If you want to read more about mums treatment and her story, visit: www.cancerispants.co.uk
Here's an excerpt from Mum's blog which explains more about some of the treatment, in particular Dendritic Cell Therapy :
"I have advanced breast cancer. This is treatable but not curable. In the UK at present there is a ‘ladder’ of treatments for people with advanced breast cancer. For me these are mainly chemotherapies or hormone therapies. I have estrogen receptive cancer and therefore there are hormone treatments which I can try as well as chemotherapies. In practice oncologists will work their way through these treatments until they start running out of options. At this point there may be trials that I might be eligible for – but at this point my future becomes more and more uncertain. As cancer is very clever it becomes resistant to treatments and so once I have had a treatment I cannot have it again and while a treatment may work for a while the expectation is that it will, at some point, become resistant and I will have to change treatments (assuming I have options left).
Chemotherapy weakens the immune system. Some of the most exciting developments in cancer treatments are happening in the field of immunotherapy. These basically look to strengthening the bodies own immunological response to cancer. For melenomas results have been amazing. In practice these approaches seek to both help the body’s immune system recognise the cancer (cancer stem cells are invisible to the immune system which make it so difficult for the body to put up an effective fight). They also use techniques which boost the body’s own T-cell – or fighter cells – so that they can overcome the cancer. (Please note this is a very layperson explanation).
Work on immunotherapies has been going on for years and now, with the work on melenoma, there is a concrete proof of concept demonstrating amazing results. Work on these therapies for other cancers are in trials (and not for all cancers) and are basically not available or will not be available to me now. Possibly this will change but whether there would be a trial and whether I would get on one is totally uncertain and do I really want to wait until I have run out of standard options and use this as a last chance option – even if it were available to me. What I have learnt from my intensive research since being diagnosed is that once you have stage IV cancer you cannot afford to sit around and hope. You have to absolutely be on top of your options and investigate every one. The time it takes for promising drugs to get through the trial, registration and the incorporation in standard treatment route is too long for people like me.
I have spent hours researching and from this I am convinced that dendritic cell therapy, an immunotherapy available only in a few clinics in Germany, Japan and Mexico is too promising not to have. It is a therapy that has shown best results when the cancer load is lowest and at an earlier stage in the cancers development, which is why I need to have it as soon after this first round of chemotherapy as possible.
Dendritic cell therapy involves the use of a personalised vaccine to retrain the immune system to recognise cancer cells as a threat to the body.
Dendritic cells are found in all blood vessels. These cells identify foreign substances, such as cancer cells in the body, process them and then help jump start the immune response to destroy them by bringing them to the attention of the T cells. Often the dendritic cells are not very effective with this process.
With Dendritic Cell Therapy, the patient's own dendritic cells are treated and modified to be able to specifically train the T cells to attack and kill all cancer cells that have the same foreign substance on their surface.
We are planning all sorts of FUND RAISING activities- please join in and help us raise the money- because one thing we all know for sure is that #cancerispants!!!
We will be forever grateful for anything you can give.
Louise, Rupert, Ella, Tom, William and Ned
You can keep up with my story here- www.cancerispants.co.uk
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Ella Howes
Organizer
