Are There Any Rays of Hope?

[Thracian]

http://news.sky.com/story/cancer-treatment-for-football-mascot-bradley-lowery-not-working-10828963

 

 

I don't know if anyone out there has any ideas that might help this lad.

 

It struck me that they might get hold of the Christie Hospital in Manchester where they seem to have made a promising breakthrough but it obviously depends on the kind of cancer he has and how much damage any treatment has already done.

 

Anyway I've just posted the link in case there's anyone out there with some real knowledge or hope to offer to Bradley and his family because so much of the treatment presently given seems ineffective despite frequent publicity soundbites suggesting that serious progress is being made in various directions.

 

http://www.christie.nhs.uk/about-us/news/press/world-first-drug-trial-at-the-christie-makes-bob-s-cancer-disappear-without-a-trace/

    

 

[Bryn]

Another thinly veiled swipe at the health services? "Publicity soundbites".

 

You have linked an article referring to lung cancer in an adult. Bradley has a rare and poorly understood brain/nerve cancer. Cancer is not one disease, it is a myriad of very different diseases with very different prognoses.

 

Cancer survival has doubled in the UK in the last forty years. Fifty percent of cancer patients are still alive at ten years. That is enormous progress.

 

You should educate yourself a little and spare yourself some pessimism. Lord knows life is hard enough.

[Rincewind]

My brother had a form of cancer Mestheliome lung cancer. Although the damage had been done a few years ago. He was a smoker from early on. He used to attend something called MELU Luncheon Club who used to put on dinners and trips for sufferers. I doubt that he could have been helped much more by all the medical people that treated him over the years.

[Thracian]

12 hours ago, Bryn said:

Another thinly veiled swipe at the health services? "Publicity soundbites".

 

You have linked an article referring to lung cancer in an adult. Bradley has a rare and poorly understood brain/nerve cancer. Cancer is not one disease, it is a myriad of very different diseases with very different prognoses.

 

Cancer survival has doubled in the UK in the last forty years. Fifty percent of cancer patients are still alive at ten years. That is enormous progress.

 

You should educate yourself a little and spare yourself some pessimism. Lord knows life is hard enough.

I'm well aware of the varied nature of cancer and referred to it in my post.

 

As for your survival rates comment I'm as pleased about any progress made as the next person but am not kidded that the figures tell the accurate story by any means.

 

For a start there's been a massive increase in immigrant population over those 40 years that is not in itself related to better survival figures.

 

Indeed, while life expectancy has gone up it has not been that dramatic and I even read that it slipped over the last recorded year.

 

Furthermore "survival" is not the same as someone been treated to such effect that their quality of life improves or remains good.

 

I can't comment further on the accuracy of figures that are actually more complex than they appear, but of 10 close friends or family I've just written down who've had cancer only two remain alive today - and that thanks to clearly effective treatment.

 

The two included my wife who had excellent brain surgery and heart surgery respectively, so, no, my post was not an intended "swipe" at the NHS, just a statement of frustration at our (not just your or the medical profession's ) inability to help a little boy who, like so many others, is desperately poorly and possibly because of factors we in the broader world should be addressing first (preventatively) and way before the NHS ever gets involved.      .

 

Others of the 10 I noted survived for a time but didn't make any mentionable progress and their quality of life and health diminished rapidly.

 

To make it abundantly clear I don't have an axe to grind against the NHS and merely posted the Christie link in the forlorn hope that maybe there was something in that experimental treatment that might have been of value to Bradley or because the link might (another forlorn hope) spur someone (perhaps like yourself) into wondering about some other possibility that might help.

 

My experience of the NHS is varied from one extreme to the other and a lot of things in between.

 

I believe the NHS may have partly been at fault for the death of my grandaughter's mother from pre-eclampsia, at the time her daughter was born and a stroke suffered by my wife after she sat, all but inactive, on a chair in her ward for over a week  thus, in my view, provoking an unnecessary minor stroke - while waiting for a heart blockage to be removed.

 

I'm fairly sure the doctors recognised that too, because almost the moment she had the stroke she was suddenly scheduled for surgery the next morning. But whatever the truth of it we're not litigatious people - people make mistakes just as I do.   

 

I'm also delighted with the revolutionary treatment my grandaughter's had in Birmingham for brittle bone disease because, from a seemingly unpromising position her bone density now measures near normal, her once regular fractures have become a memory and she's living a normal life now except for a bit of built-in caution that might not even be needed.

 

So no, I'm not all against the NHS and I'm not pessimistic. Rather like my view of football and footballers - I see good and bad in the same team and the same players according to form.                  

 

But part of the above perhaps explains why I would like to see Bradley have some hope. As a sportsman who so appreciates the joy of being able do all the things that make life precious, serious illness really gets to me and serious illness in children even more so.