Karen Dickinson cancer video

Lancaster Guardian

Mum of two Karen Dickinson, who has signed up to a new clinical trial to help future patients like her avoid further unnecessary treatment with the use of a simple blood test which can detect cancer returning before it shows on a scan.

Transcript

00:00So, when I was told that I'd got melanoma cancer, it was a huge shock.

00:29I was reeling, although I was partially in my head, he kind of disasterised things and

00:34I kind of thought that it could be that.

00:37It was still a huge shock to actually hear the words, I'm really sorry to say that it's

00:42cancer.

00:43And then you have to go about telling your partner, your children, and that's really

00:47really hard because you feel like you want to protect them and don't want to tell them

00:51but it's really important because you need them on the journey that you're going to be

00:55going through.

00:56My children are grown up women, if I hadn't have told them they would have killed me for

01:02not telling them so I had to tell them and they were really great.

01:06They were shocked, they were upset obviously, just the same as you are because you're the

01:10mum, but at the end of the day they want to be there to support you so that's really important.

01:26In the Detection 2 trial we're using a specialised blood test that can detect early on if a cancer

01:37is coming back.

01:38So in the trial we're comparing the standard course of treatment against regular blood

01:45tests to see that can detect early on if a cancer is coming back.

01:51It's allowing us to try and personalise medicine a bit better so that we're not just blanket

01:57treating all patients with all the same treatment.

02:00It's allowing us to see which patients need treatment and treating them accordingly.

02:06For me and other people going down this route, the trial will show whether it is more beneficial

02:11for people to just have the blood test rather than going down the targeted therapy route.

02:17So hopefully the results will show that it's beneficial and lots of people will not need

02:22to go needlessly down the treatment route when they actually don't need to.

02:28Knowing that one in two of us are going to be affected by cancer in some ways, I've been

02:32donating every month for the last 20 years.

02:35So that research to me is really, really important and although it's not a huge amount of money

02:40that I donate every month, to me just being able to do something is really important to

02:45try and help that work continue to try and find better cures, better treatments for people

02:50dealing with cancer.

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