Within eleven months of that operation I found another lump, which again they removed and did a, did some more dissection, took more lymph nodes. And they sent me again to see the consultant, and they decided then that it was faster-growing than they had anticipated. They did CT scans and it was suggested that I went on the interferon trial. That trial was you’re either - we all had four weeks of intravenous interferon, and then some of us went on for another forty-eight weeks to have three, three injections a week, which were self-administered. And we were checked every three weeks to make sure that everything was going all right. And I managed to do a full twelve months, with some side effects - feeling very tired, flu-like symptoms nearly the whole way through, but I did still manage to work. I cut my hours down. I did four days a week instead of five, but I still managed to work.
And they thought that had, that was, things were going well. And then I was clear, that was 2005 I had the interferon. Then in 2007, in the September, I found another lump. And they did a CT scan and they decided that the disease had spread. So they needed to do something about it, but there was no, no set medication. I was offered a trial, and I had two treatments of that trial, and I lost all my hair on that trial, had a wig. I was devastated about losing the hair, but I had a wig and most people said it looked quite normal. So that wasn’t too bad.
But then found after another CT scan that it wasn’t actually working because there were five lesions, and it had shrunk, started to shrink one but none of the others were shrinking. So they decided that it wasn’t worth carrying on. So I was then told, “Well, that trial’s not working.” And that is the only time that I felt really let down, because the doctor told me didn’t explain that, “Well, that one’s not working but we can try something else.” It wasn’t until I was told, “That one’s not working.” And I sat there and thought, “Where do I go from here?” And I had to ask the question, “Well, is there anything else?” And it wasn’t until I asked that question that, “Well, yes, there might be other trials, but you have to have a break.”
FOOTNOTE: Anthea has been in three trials. Here she is talking about the first two, a 12-month randomised trial of interferon, followed by a non-randomised trial of paclitaxel (Taxol).
