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.
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.
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?
Breast Cancer Awareness Month has come and gone again with one day, Tuesday 13th set aside for Secondary Breast Cancer. But for those of us living with MBC, “Every day is secondary breast cancer day”.
It was shocking to hear the Prime Minister dismiss the importance of cancer outcomes in such an offhand way in a TV interview this week. But at the same time, it was sadly not surprising to many of us at Met-Up UK.
Following on from our #TrodelvyNow post last month, MetUpUk Member Phillippa has appeared in the Daily Mail, alongside other women for who this drug could mean, literally the difference between life and death.
One of the feelings I remember most about my treatment for primary breast cancer in 2013 is my strength leaving me… I was on my lunch break after starting chemotherapy (yes I worked through treatment – I was 31 and freelance) and it felt like my stomach muscles just turned to jelly and tumbled out onto the pavement (invisibly – nobody else had a clue what was going on).
We started our campaign in Metastatic May with some information about treatment lines and it really caused a bit of a stir, especially on Instagram.
Why? Because people don’t want to think that this disease is going to kill us. We have to remain positive. We have to see the chink of light and I agree we all have to have hope. That was my introduction. We need hope.
Metastatic breast cancer is not only taking the lives of 31 women per day. In the limited time they have left women living with this disease are experiencing financial hardship.
When I was first diagnosed with cancer, my primary cancer, at 35 in July 2016 I was determined that I wouldn’t let cancer take over my life. I sat in a chair and thought I’d have 8 months of treatment and be done with it. Oh. What a fool I was.
