After originally being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 at the age of 37, we received the news at the end of September 2016 that it had returned in my liver. Secondary breast cancer is not curable, however, it is treatable and although we were devastated by the news and its impact on our family, we were encouraged by the speed in which the NHS responded to my situation.

A year on from my diagnosis, I have been through five months of chemotherapy and started on a three weekly regime of Herceptin and Pertuzumab. Pertuzumab is a fairly new drug which is proven to be effective in treating secondary HER2 positive (oestrogen receptive) breast cancer. However, Pertuzumab is still not available on the NHS in Wales, although it is available routinely in England on the NHS, which is why we set up this crowdfunding page and started fundraising to pay for me to have Pertuzumab at home in Swansea.

We had the incredible news a few months back that my Pertuzumab treatment was to be funded, which was more than we could ever have hoped for, however the story doesn’t stop there. I will need to take Pertuzumab for the rest of my life, or until it stops working. At which point I will need to move on to another combination drug, of which there are very few, as treatment for secondary cancer is not historically successful in the long term. Most of these types of drugs give patients extra months or hopefully years, which although not seen as financially viable by organisations such as NICE is an absolute lifeline to people like me.

This is when the next drug Kadcyla would become critical for me, but unfortunately like Pertuzumab, it is also not available on the NHS in Wales and would need to be paid for privately. This is the reason that we continue to fundraise. We hope that by reaching our target, the money raised will allow us room to breathe as a family, knowing that when we need to move on to another drug that the money will already be in place for us, and will give us another couple of years’ worth of treatments.

I have been loving and living life for the past 10 years and have continued to do so over the past year, which has in a large part been down to all the wonderful people - some friends, some family, some I’ve never met – who have helped us, each of them in their very own unique way. These incredible souls have raised money by donating, baking, climbing, walking, cycling, running, busking, lunching, raffling and much, much more and it’s been truly inspirational and very humbling.

This time next year I hope to be posting another update on more crazy fundraising activities that have taken place and also that I’m still #lovingandlivinglife and #making memories.

Love

Sam, Phil and Ioan xxxx

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