Claire and Steve

I will be taking part in this fundraiser 100 miles in May to hopefully raise lots of money towards the continued research into the treatment of Melanoma which with advances in surgery and more importantly in immunotherapy over the last fifteen years have given my wife Claire and I hope after she was diagnosed with stage 4 Melanoma cancer in May 2022.

Claire had a Mole removed in July 2021 after we noticed it had changed in shape and colour and within the next seven months had to endure another two operations to remove more tissue and 21 Lymph nodes that could potentially be cancerous.

Unfortunately although at the time it seemed the surgery was enough a few months later cancer cells had moved from the original site and were showing up in the base of Claires head, spine, shoulder and her leg.

Claire had already had one infusion of immunotherapy treatment before this news and it only took one more infusion for a new Pet Ct scan to show that no cancer cells were present.

Claire has just finished one year of treatment but has to undertake another year due to the initial aggressive spread of the disease.

Immunotherapy is at the moment the best treatment for Melanoma but like all forms of treatment for cancer it does come with potential serious side effects some of which Claire has had and some of those have to be managed by different specialists, scans and medications on top of what Claire already has to undertake.

This is why it is so important to continue the research into immunotherapy and at the same time raising awareness of how serious skin cancer is.

Without the advances in immunotherapy in the last fifteen years the treatment of this aggressive form of Melanoma would not be possible.