Help Sam Fund Cancer Treatment To Extend Her Life

Hello everyone. My name is Samantha, I’m 39 and mother to a ten year old daughter. I am a Public Health Nurse, a pasta lover who’s always hungry and can often be found rescuing shoes trapped in stores.

 I have set up this page to help contribute towards the cost of a drug that may extend my life. Many of my friends and family have reached out to offer their support over the last eighteen months, and I have always appreciated their generosity whether it be a their kind messages, gifts or company. Their support has been a huge source of comfort to me and for that I am immensely grateful.

 Several kind people have also offered to set up and contribute to a fundraiser to help with costs associated with me living with cancer for which I have always been humbled by, and given I now have to self-fund a potentially life-extending drug, this is a way you could support me.

 My Story

 I have been living with metastatic bowel cancer since June 2021. My diagnosis came following a history of bloating, bleeding and a change in bowel habits that sent me to my GP on a number of occasions. I have had a long history of bowel issues all my adult life, but as these symptoms were not resolving, they were causing me some concern and needed investigating.

 I was diagnosed during a non-urgent sigmoidoscopy off the back of a GP referral for suspected colitis. I was alone, as I had been reassured this procedure was routine and unlikely to be anything sinister. Five minutes into the examination I knew I had cancer; it didn’t take a genius to recognise the huge ulcerating mass on the screen in front of me wasn’t anything but the Big C.

 At the age of 37, my life as I knew it, was about to change dramatically. I have received various different therapies to treat my cancer since my diagnosis including chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery and ablation. Devastatingly, following my liver surgery in March 2022, I learned there was cancer left behind despite being told all had been removed. Treatment options available to me were now limited at my local hospital and this lead me to move my care to the Royal Marsden hospital in London. While my new medical team are experts in cancer care, the residual cancer left behind following my surgery rapidly spread throughout my liver, and despite many cycles of aggressive chemotherapy, my new team have been unable to regain control of the cancer.

 I was told the heartbreaking news on 17 January 2023 that I would never be a candidate for surgery again, but my medical team felt that I would benefit from a palliative treatment to my liver known as SIRT (selective internal radiation therapy) in an attempt to gain some control of the cancer in my liver and essentially buy me some more time.

 In addition, I am being moved to an oral chemotherapy drug, Lonsurf. This is a third, or in my case, final line of therapy as all others have been exhausted and sadly failed. This new drug is not meant to shrink, but to hopefully stabilise my cancer. Sadly, in isolation, it has shown to extend life for only a relatively short period of time, but it is well-tolerated, enabling me to maintain a good quality of life.

 Like everyone living with cancer, I want to explore all options and try all treatments with sufficient evidence of efficacy that may help me. A drug that may help me is Bevacizumab, a targeted therapy. Unfortunately this drug is not funded on the NHS, and while it is available privately, it is not licensed to be used with Lonsurf as this is only licensed as a monotherapy. This resulted in my insurance company declining this additional treatment, despite there being strong evidence from a phase 3 trial that in combination with Lonsurf, Bevacizumab was shown to extend overall survival compared to Lonsurf alone. In my situation, this is a treatment I cannot afford NOT to try. I am therefore self-funding this drug but the costs are extremely high. At my treating hospital, Bevacizumab will cost between £1,790 and £2,290 per treatment, and treatment is given two-weekly. Over the course of this new treatment cycle (6 months), this will cost almost £25,000.

 There is absolutely no obligation to donate; by sharing my page and my story, we are raising awareness of bowel cancer in younger people which is equally important and something I have strived to do since my diagnosis. Caught early, bowel cancer can be cured.

 Any funds not utilised towards my treatment will be donated equally between The Bowel Movement and Bowel Cancer UK.

 Thank you for taking the time to read my story.

Samantha