The healthy father diagnosed with stage four cancer says he left his 'Nightmare on Elm Street' image behind after a horrible chemo reaction made him too embarrassed to go to his son's cricket match and now he's hoping to save your life. live through innovative vaccines.
Geoffrey Seymour, 41, a buying specialist, loved playing tennis, basketball and cricket and was always in good health until, shortly before his 41st birthday, he started seeing blood in his stool.
Jeffrey knew from the TV commercial that it was a symptom of cancer, so he immediately went to his therapist.
Geoffrey, who lives in Richmond, London with his wife Santa, 44, and son Marco, 10, has been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer which has spread from the colon to the liver - a very serious and seemingly hopeless situation. it to them. it must be "wrapped in a burning paper bag."
According to Jeffrey, he also had a bad reaction to chemotherapy, which severely irritated the skin on his face and made him look like Freddy Krueger from the 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street .
However, chemotherapy is no longer effective, and now, in a bid to save his life, Jeffrey heads to Germany for dendritic cell therapy, where a personalized vaccine to boost immunity is being produced in the lab.
According to Cancer Research UK, research in this area is in its infancy, so the treatment doesn't come cheap - just one shot in Germany on October 17 cost £17,000, and Jeffrey is now waiting to see if that's enough. Help him while continuing to collect money to pay him.
She said: "I couldn't even wait until the end of the fundraiser just because I was so worried about the spread of this disease."
Jeffrey was determined to find a new approach after three sessions of five failed chemo doses, leaving him with such severe side effects that he never wanted to go out in public again, not even to see his son not playing cricket.
“I had a really bad reaction on my face. It was full of painful blisters that made my face feel like it was on fire,” he said.
“I just got to a point where I'm a bit like A Nightmare on Elm Street. If I don't walk in with a bag over my head, other people will come up to me and look at me and think, "What's with this guy?" if I'm lucky enough to mingle with the crowd.
Jeffrey's trial began in April 2021, just two weeks before his 41st birthday on March 4, when he started getting early signs of cancer.
Noticing blood in his stool, Jeffrey decides to see his GP, knowing that it could be a symptom of cancer. And at the end of March, at the Kingston hospital, he was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer with metastases to the liver.
After being diagnosed in March 2021, she underwent five rounds of chemotherapy every three weeks, which initially reduced liver damage. At this point, he said he felt "optimistic".
In December 2021, she underwent surgery to remove a third of her liver, and the medical team began preparing her for colon radiation therapy – she even got a radio marker tattoo for laser realignment.
A month later, scans showed multiple tumors in his liver, so he received chemotherapy again. This time, the operation was successful and liver surgery is scheduled for June 2022.
But once things started getting better, a few weeks before the surgery, scans showed the course of the disease. Geoffrey underwent another chemo with different drugs, and the surgery was cancelled.
Just two cycles later, blood tests and scans came back showing progress of the disease, and the side effects became unbearable for Jeffrey.
She said: “The side effects kept getting worse and now the chemo isn't working anymore. The body is used to it."
She explains why she reacts badly to chemotherapy drugs: “Basically, it kills all fast-growing cells, including cancer cells, as well as hair and nails. I have a very bad reaction to this on my face.
Determined to find an alternative, Geoffrey began his research by searching online and came across dendritic cell therapy, only to find that it would not be available to him in the UK.
He decided to fly to a laboratory in Ulm, Germany for a week of treatment on 17 October 2022. Friends and family came together to contribute to the 'Go Fund Me' call which raised over £14,000 and helped fund a £17,000 infusion.
"I'm still in pain, I'm in a lot of pain, and I'm trying to find a good balance between very strong drugs," he said.
Geoffrey will be meeting with his oncologist in the UK on November 1 but knows he may have to pay for additional doses of vaccines and additional treatment overseas and is continuing to raise money to pay.
Caroline Geraghty, Cancer Information Nurse at Cancer Research UK, said: “Dendritic cell therapy is a type of vaccine that can cure cancer. Dendritic cells help the immune system recognize and attack abnormal cells such as cancer cells.
“To make a vaccine, scientists grow dendritic cells along with cancer cells in a laboratory. The vaccine then stimulates the immune system to attack the cancer. It's still under research so the evidence base isn't strong enough yet to make it available in the UK.
"Decisions about the best treatment should be based on strong evidence of benefit, so it's important that patients talk to their doctors about alternative treatments they might consider."
He added: “Thanks to ongoing research developments, there are still many new anticancer drugs showing efficacy in clinical trials and offering potential options for people living with cancer.
“But while regulators have increased the rate at which they evaluate them for routine NHS use, unfortunately there may still be a time when certain drugs are not yet available to the people who could benefit from them. We understand how frustrating this can be."