My mum’s breast cancer came back a month ago - it’s stage 4 and it’s metastasised to her bones. Her life expectancy is about 6 months without treatment. She has triple negative breast cancer which is rarer, more aggressive and significantly harder to treat than the more common hormone-responsive breast cancers.
There’s a new immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab, which is effective on advanced triple negative breast cancer when given alongside standard chemotherapy. But it costs £3000 per treatment and she needs 18 rounds of it. Her oncologist applied for funding and got it!
After 6 months of treatment my mum should have 23 months of “progression free survival” compared to 16 months if she had chemo alone. She’s only 57 so every extra day I can have my mum in life is truly a gift. I’m so so grateful for our NHS.
This is probably a stupid question but do they have running water? I assume they can use generators or solar if they’re not on the power grid, septic tank, satellite internet. But water seems tricky. And mail, but I guess you collect it from town. And how far is town? Surely an hours drive would be the limit of what’s reasonable?