Strive for Five - Living Life with Stage 4 Cancer

06/08/2025

I'm excited to be presenting at next month's Patient Empowerment conference in London, it looks like a great two day programme.

I'll be presenting on "Effective Clinical Communication is Crucial for Patient Empowerment" as a plenary session on day two. This is a topic I'm passionate about as I truly believe that if we can improve doctors and nurses communication skills (language, terminology and tone) it will help us as patients and will ultimately be better for them too!

For more information on the conference: https://patient-empowerment.com/

31/07/2025

One of the privileges of being a Patient Advocate is that I get to . Recently I was asked to give the patient perspective on the future of DISEASE PREVENTION.

Prevention of disease (or "reducing risk") is such an important topic for the future of health and provision of health care.

I was privileged to be part of a panel organised by Adelphi Group at the Anthropy UK "Rebooting Britain" event earlier this year. This was title "THE PREVENTION REVOLUTION IN YOUR HEALTHCARE" and I enjoyed sharing the platform with a truly expert panel.

An excellent report has been published from this session which you can view HERE:
https://pharmaphorum.com/patients/prevention-healthcare-revolution-future-pharma

Please let me know your thoughts on this.

22/07/2025

I'm proud to have been involved in the 2025 version of the GOOD PATIENT PARTNERSHIP GUIDE, a great initiative to encourage pharma to work together with patients to help improve health literacy, something I feel is critically important to help set patients up for treatment success

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE FULL GUIDE HERE: https://www.precisionaq.com/en-gb/good-patient-partnership-guide-download

21/07/2025

Sometimes I have to remind myself that “living life with stage 4 cancer” is about LIVING LIFE!

Last week I took Tommy on a little tour visiting family in the Black Country, friends in Morecambe, and had a few days walking in the Peak District based in Bakewell.

Great adventure, thank you to everyone who made it so special for me and Tommy.

09/07/2025

The cancer strategy that the UK government is developing is such an important opportunity to build the cancer service we all deserve.

It’s vital that this is more than patching up a broken service, we need real changes. Please join me in signing this letter from Cancer Research UK to Wes Streeting MP, and please share it with all your friends.

https://action.cancerresearchuk.org/page/168473/petition/1

The government's National Cancer Plan is a once in a decade opportunity to transform cancer survival in England. Join us in calling for a bold plan that is committed to delivering the change needed for people affected by cancer now and in the future.

07/07/2025

What a great experience - spent Thursday and Friday in Harrogate with Cancer Research UK Science and Innovation for their ALL FELLOWS meeting - an opportunity to meet and network with talented cancer researchers from across the UK.

It was my privilege to at this event and share the stage with the inspirational Patrick McGuire presenting on the importance, relevance and practicalities of Patient Involvement in discovery, pre-clinical and clinical research. Dr Charlotte Pawlyn chaired the session expertly and illustrated her experience setting up a great PPI initiative in myeloma research.

This is what the All Fellows meeting was all about: “We rely on the best researchers to help us beat cancer. We’re supporting you as you transition from the early stages of your careers into the world leaders of tomorrow, ensuring we can continue to lead innovative research long into the future.“

And of course, when in Harrogate it’s compulsory to go to Aunt Betty’s Tea Room where I had a yummy Yorkshire Curd Tart!

02/07/2025

Here’s a new app giving access to the only bespoke, managed mobile database of bowel disease related research - could be a useful tool for any colorectal cancer patients looking for active studies.

Great initiative from Bowel Research UK and Acpgbi

https://bowelresearchuk.org/trialsapp/

28/06/2025

Always great to hear of new treatments for stage 4 - many thanks to Dr_Jamie_Murphy for sharing this

🔥🔥🔥The STELLAR‑303 study 🔥🔥🔥is a Phase 3 clinical trial comparing a 🆕 drug combination —zanzalintinib (an experimental tyrosine kinase inhibitor) plus atezolizumab (an immunotherapy drug) — against regorafenib, a currently available standard treatment, for patients with metastatic (mCRC). STELLAR‑303 recruited approximately 900 adults with mismatch repair proficient (pMMR / MSS) mCRC, who had cancer progression after all standard options had been exhausted (5FU, capecitabine, irinotecan, oxaliplatin ± Avastin, cetuximab or panitumimab if RAS wild-type, and BRAF-targeted therapy if applicable). Exelixis, the company 🏃 this trial, announced this week that STELLAR‑303 met its primary endpoint, demonstrating a statistically significant improvement in overall survival. The 📈 have not yet been released from the trial and will be presented in the coming weeks. However, the hope is this is a step toward being able to offer to the c.85% of mCRC patients who aren’t currently eligible due to having mismatch repair proficient disease. Discussions are being had with the 🇺🇸 FDA so this is 1️⃣ to ⌚️ 🤞🤞🤞

25/06/2025

Misinformation is rife around cancer and it’s putting people’s lives at risk.

This report on BBC Panorama shines a light on these dangers and is worth a watch.

Even Strive for Five is targeted by people peddling fake cures, I delete dozens of comments on each post and block the accounts yet more still appear.

Please question any of this dodgy advice - always look for the scientific evidence.

Marianna Spring investigates the rise of health conspiracy theories. Are social media companies’ algorithms pushing potentially harmful content at vulnerable patients?

08/06/2025

Being in a clinical trial can gain access to the latest treatments and help us all learn more about medicines in development.
The big challenge is often finding out about them - that’s where this site is excellent, best I’ve found:
https://clinicaltrials.gov

06/06/2025

What an unusual day - a podcast and my scan results!



This afternoon I had great fun recording a podcast as part of Chris Nichols’ series called “About Time”, we talked about how Strive for Five and Beyond came to be, the importance of improving communication between doctors and patients in oncology, how patients can set themselves up for success, and so much more!


The first episodes of the series are already available and feature some truly uplifting stories, you can find them here: https://open.spotify.com/show/4hPwWq55HsV8vGCTTOfONs

Then this evening I had a call from my oncologist with my latest CT scan result - CLEAR SCAN! Such a relief! I'll be celebrating by eating some fish and chips!