My name is Diane and I support and represent “Cure Our Ovarian Cancer” Charitable Trust in the UK. I am living with the rare sub-type of Ovarian Cancer known as Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer which accounts for less than 10% of all Ovarian Cancers. The symptoms are just the same as the more common High Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer but that is where the similarities end. Typically Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer affects younger women in their prime and thus leaves a trail of destruction and devastation in its path. Because it is so rare the research into this disease is sparse, which in turn affects the treatment options and survival rates for women with Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer.
I want to help change that!
For me, cure is no longer an option and I am living with incurable Metastatic Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer. My treatment options are diminishing and I am enduring a second line of Carboplatin in the hope of accessing more treatment options that may or may not help me.Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer is a tricky disease in that it grows more slowly than High Grade and so for that reason Chemotherapy has little or no meaningful benefit for many women, including me. Chemotherapy works on rapidly dividing cells which means it will work with High Grade but not Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer.
Sadly the UK ovarian cancer survival rate is ranked 45th out of 59 countries which is a devastating statistic. The survival rate for those women with the rare Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer diagnosis is unimaginable! In the UK the treatment protocols followed by Clinicians are the same as for High Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer because there is no separate treatment protocol for Low Grade despite the fact that it behaves very differently from a molecular point of view. To change that we need more Clinical research into Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer to establish the sound evidence base needed to produce separate treatment protocols for this disease.
Professor Charlie Gourley and his team in the “Nicola Murray Centre for Ovarian Cancer Research” want to change the future for women with a diagnosis of Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer. They have already provided national leadership on Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer clinical trials and are now performing laboratory research to inform the next generation of Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer clinical trials.
I want to help him with this ….. how can you can help me?
Please would you be willing to donate to Professor Gourleys fundraising page which can be accessed through the “Donations” tab and clicking on “to UK research directly”. It does not need to be a large donation because the beauty of crowd funding is that a little from many makes a huge difference collectively.
Could you hold a small fundraiser with monies raised donated directly to Professor Gourleys fundraising page?
Could you share Professor Gourleys fundraising page far and wide in the hope that we can reach more people who could help us raise the funds needed?
I would be grateful to you for any support that you can manage. I want to stay alive long enough to see Low Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer in the UK and worldwide have its own treatment protocols with more treatment options available based on solid evidenced based Clinical Research.
Please lets save the lives of other young women, all of whom are somebodies Daughter, Sister, Wife, Partner or Mother!
Heartfelt gratitude to you for reading this.