Claire & Steve

I will be taking part in this fundraiser again after completing it last year and raising over £1440 pounds for this charity only made possible with the overwhelming support and generosity from family and friends.

To remind everyone why this is so important to us here is a recap of where we left off and where we are now regarding Claires Melanoma and treatment for those who do not already know.

My wife 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 including a neck dissection 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 had just finished one year of treatment but had to undertake another year due to the initial aggressive spread of the disease.
Immunotherapy was at the time the best treatment for Claires Melanoma but like all forms of treatment for cancer it did 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.

That was our story when i completed the challenge in May last year!
Claire was progressing well with the immunotherapy but in August last year we received a phone call that would once again bring our world crashing down.
we was told that Claires recent Mri of her brain showed two small tumours and the scans would be sent to Kings hospital to decide the best course of treatment!!
Kings referred Claire to Guys hospital to receive a form of radiotherapy called stereotactic radio surgery ( this targets the individual tumours and not the whole brain)

Claire had the treatment and the wait for next Mri scan 3 months later would start again.
The next Mri came and the results showed that although the treatment was a success this scan showed 3 new small tumours had appeared so Claire was referred back to guys hospital to treat the new areas.

Claire had the treatment again and has now also started a new form of treatment belonging to a group of medicines called targeted therapy's which comes in tablet form which she started a couple of months ago.
The routine MRI and Pet ct scans have been booked for early May and we will once again await the results and hope for positive news this time from the results.

This again highlights how Aggressive and invasive Melanoma is and how the advances in the treatment of this disease has come so far especially in recent years.

As i write this they have just announced live trials of what they hope is a vaccine for Melanoma and maybe other types of cancer.

How amazing would that be !
Your support makes all these advances possible.