Trying to help a friend...

[Rustinho]

Hi there folks.

A friend of mine is suffering from cancer (she is only 27) and the NHS are refusing to part-fund her treatement as part of a clinical trial because the treatment is unlicensed. Of course the treatment is unlicensed! That's why it's undergoing a clinical trial!

It makes me so bl00dy angry when this sort of postcode lottery for treatment occurs.

It's costing the NHS more to treat her week by week than it would if they put her on the clinical trial!

Link to the newspaper story in the Lancashire Evening Post:

http://www.lep.co.uk/news/health/3_0..._life_1_761546

Please feel free to post this story on other forums that you frequent while we (as in her friends) try to draw attention to her case and persuade the NHS Primary Care Trust to fund her treatment.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer in doing this.

[Rustinho]

Just as an update to my earlier post, facebook users can now join the following group if they want to keep updated and find out ways they can help.

http://www.facebook.com/rustinho?v=w...23406054342753

or search for "Heather's Lymphoma Treatment".

Heather has been a friend of mine for many years and it really cuts me up to see her going through what she is at the moment, and indeed has been since not long after I first got to know her.

Thanks folks.

[Rustinho]

I'll plug this again in the hope that those of you out there that didn't see this when I posted it before get to see it this time.

http://www.lep.co.uk/news/race_again...ather_1_788270

In all honesty it doesn't look good for Heather even if she does get the treatment but she's being much braver about the situation than I fear I might be if it was me.

Why does cr4p like this seem to happen to good people when all the w4nkers in the world seem to get everything on a silver platter?!

[Calos]

I'll plug this again in the hope that those of you out there that didn't see this when I posted it before get to see it this time.

http://www.lep.co.uk/news/race_again...ather_1_788270

In all honesty it doesn't look good for Heather even if she does get the treatment but she's being much braver about the situation than I fear I might be if it was me.

Why does cr4p like this seem to happen to good people when all the w4nkers in the world seem to get everything on a silver platter?!

Your right somehow I did miss your early posts on this, second.. only the good die young... I should know; it sucks btw but we can still choose to fight we can still choose to care.

Signed up on facebook

peace
cal

[Rustinho]

http://www.lep.co.uk/lifestyle/heath...tment_1_796016

Just to update anyone who is interested - Heather has started having the experimental cancer treatment. Hopefully it will be successful enough for her to have a stem cell transplant from her sister's bone marrow.

Things still hang in the balance. It is an experimental treatment after all and the delayed decision by the local health trust certainly didn't help matters.

Heather has told me that she is hanging on to the money in excess of the £16,000 needed to fund the treatment for the time being just in case she requires additional treatment. Because she is being treated privately the NHS won't pick up the tab should she get an infection or whatever because of the private treatment. As soon as she is signed back into the NHS after the private treatment any additional donations left over are being donated to cancer research charities.

I'll be keeping my fingers crossed!