
Today we want to honour our friend and MetUpUK member Emma Hillier.
Today we want to honour our friend and MetUpUK member Emma Hillier.
A new campaign in Wales, by MetUpUK member Tassia Haines, aims to draw attention to the fact that Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) patients feel that they are being failed by the Welsh Government.
Have you ever wondered what the relationship is like between primary and secondary breast cancer patients when they are talking about cancer?
We’ve put 4 of our MetUpUK members on a zoom call to chat it out – Mary and Laura have secondary cancer and Helen and Emily have had primary breast cancer.
A diagnosis of cancer is a major life event. None of us is immune to the
potential of developing the disease. It doesn’t discriminate by age, gender,
sexual orientation or ethnicity. It can also develop in any part of the body. In
the case of breast cancer, one in seven women will be diagnosed with it
during their lifetime. Approximately 30% of those women will go on to develop secondary breast cancer.
Laura has been living with metastatic breast cancer for 14.5 years, and Nina was diagnosed less than a year ago.
They have been friends since they were teenagers.
Join them as they chat about finding out their cancer was incurable.
Hi, I’m Kat, and I’m a nurse at Dr Kershaw’s Hospice in Oldham. You’ve heard from me before and today I wanted to share with you my experiences of supporting Becky, an incredible woman living with metastatic breast cancer, and my thoughts on what I hope early hospice care was able to contribute to her life.
“My little sister Helen is 39 years old. She is a married mum of 3 girls, all under the age of 9, and is a nurse with 22 years of service in the RAF. She is a much-loved wife, an adored mummy, a treasured daughter, a dearly loved sister, niece, and aunt, and a favoured friend and colleague to many.
31 life size figures of women are now set to tour the UK as an interactive campaign to raise awareness of issues surrounding secondary breast cancer after a small residency with the support of The Corn Exchange in Manchester.
When I first started volunteering with METUPUK, I wasn’t really sure what I would do. For a few months, I sat on the sides to get a feel for the organisation. I shared METUPUK links on social media, but I don’t have much of a social media presence, and Instagram is a bit of a mystery to me. I’ve never figured out how to do makeup, plus my hair is a non-event after chemo. I thought I wanted to help with drug access or access to clinical trials, but I was flexible and wanted to see what was needed.
METUPUK historically maintained their own in-house clinical trial database for metastatic trials in the UK as there was no one source that contained them all. It used the key sites used across the UK; Cancer Research UK, Be Part of Research, ISRCTN and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Leaping forward to 2022, surely by now one of them must be THE accurate, easily searchable source of breast cancer trials? If not, how do our oncologists quickly and accurately find the best trials for their metastatic patients?
And where do patients start when looking for a metastatic trial themselves?