Hello you lovely bunch!

I'm going to be taking part in several "challenges" throughout 2018 to raise money for The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity and I'd be incredibly grateful for your support. THE FIRST CHALLENGE IS COMING UP IN JUST A FEW WEEKS...

As most of you probably know, I received my last immunotherapy infusion in December 2017, two years after starting treatment every few weeks at The Royal Marsden Hospital in London. It's not an over-exageration to say that I probably wouldn't be here, very much alive and about to dust off my bike helmet, if it weren't for the amazing cancer research going on at centres like The Royal Marsden.

I was incredibly fortunate to become one of the first patients in the UK to receive a new cancer drug (pembrolizumab) off-trial and it couldn't have been approved by the NHS Cancer Fund at a better time for me. I was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma in October 2015 and, for the first few months afterwards things looked pretty bleak. Once malignant melanoma metastases it's notoriously aggressive and rarely responds to chemotherapy or radiotherapy -consequently, the 5 year survival for patients with stage 4 disease had been hovering around 10% for decades. To put things into perspective, the 5 year survival for someone with stage 4 breast cancer is around 20%.   

Fortunately for me, some very clever cancer researchers had been busy behind the scenes developing several cutting-edge immunotherapy drugs and around 30-40% of patients with my type of cancer seemed to be having a positive response in the early trials. The NHS approved pembrolizumab (for metastatic melanoma) in January 2016 (at the current eye-watering cost of £100,000) and I was lucky enough to have a complete response to the treatment within 7 months. I had a full 2 years of treatment (as it's still unclear how long patients need to receive the drug and also whether patients will have sustained remission once it's stopped). Gratefully I've had No Evidence of Disease (NED) for the past 18 months. Yayyyyyyy!! THANK YOU NHS.

Moving forward, the hope is that I'll remain "cancer free" but I'm taking things slowly, month by month. I go for scans at The Royal Marsden Hospital every 3 months so for now, I'm still very much a "cancer patient". Having said that, since stopping treatment a few months ago, the side effects are finally waning, I'm feeling less tired and achey, and generally much more like my old self. Anyway, those minimal side effects have been a small price to pay for getting another chance at this wonderful thing called life...

I CANNOT EXPRESS ENOUGH GRATITUDE TO ALL THE WONDERFUL STAFF AT THE ROYAL MARSDEN AND ALL THE AMAZING CANCER RESEARCHERS WORKING SO HARD BEHIND THE SCENES TO BEAT THIS DISEASE. 

To celebrate feeling fit and healthy, my first challenge is going to be a 100km cycle along The Great Ocean Road with Ben and Laura. We've heard it's pretty hilly but incredibly beautiful. The next challenge I've got lined up is another cycle challenge with my mum (and potentially the rest of my family!) between London-Brighton (slightly less glamorous but also pretty tough!). 

All I'm asking is that you consider parting with some of your finest pennies/pounds to give more people a chance of surviving cancer.

Thank you so much in advance!

Lauren xx

(P>S> You can watch the challenges unfold over on my dr_laurencara instagram or at www.laurencara.com)

A little bit about The Royal Marsden Cancer Charity: The charity raises money solely to support The Royal Marsden, a world-leading cancer centre. The charity ensures nurses, doctors and research teams can provide the very best care and develop life-saving treatments, which are used across the UK and around the world. From funding state-of-the-art equipment and groundbreaking research, to creating the very best patient environments, we will never stop looking for ways to improve the lives of people affected by cancer.