The Chris Winters Pancreatic Cancer Treatment Fund
Funds raised to 20th May £16,713
I'm Chris Winters. I'm 56 years old, married with two boys and an inoperable tumour in my pancreas.
My condition is terminal; but as far as we are concerned not hopeless!
I lost a lot of weight and after an initial diagnosis of diabetes in September 2013 all was looking OK and I was managing with tablets, exercise and diet. However after a bout of jaundice things turned much more sinister and after scans I was diagnosed with borderline operable pancreatic cancer in November of 2013 and. Since then I've undergone various procedures to fix the jaundice, along with a several regimes of chemotherapy; the first in a bid to shrink my tumour so surgery might become an option.
All was looking really positive when surgeons decided that they may have a chance to remove the tumour but, on June 2nd, we were devastated when our hopes were dashed. After starting the operation the surgical team concluded it was not possible to complete the removal.
My only chance of buying time was palliative chemotherapy so after seeking second opinions a regime was recommended and our oncologist agreed on the course of treatment of Abraxane and Gemcitabine.
Unfortunately the recommended course is not funded by the NHS for the type of cancer that I had.
We are lucky enough to have private medical insurance, and with our
oncologist’s support, they agreed to pay for the treatment from June this year. However, the insurance is limited to £50k per year and our insurers have estimated that funds will run out by October 2014 - at which point we are on our own to fund continued treatment until the new year starts in April 2015. We think this could potentially run to up toas much as £50,000.
Our oncologist has also suggested we research other options such as cyberknife (a targeted radiotherapy I think). Unfortunately we would likely have to fund these options too.
My current treatment costs in the region of £2,500 per treatment (currently 3 every 4 weeks) plus scans and consultant bills so you can see it won't take long to burn our insurance funds.