Searching, seek and ...

Today I write from the Apheresis Unit at King's College Hospital in London. 

I'm hooked to a couple of lines, one in each arm, with a whirring dull blue contraption closing the circle. An EPO boost or some other form of cycling performance skulduggery? No, the truth is more mundane. I'm recruiting foot soldiers for the next battle against The Terminator.

A long time coming
Queasy as I am about hospitals, needles and blood—it's exciting to finally be here. In some ways I've been looking forward to this for several years. While my mind was a little foggy in December 2014 (just after The Diagnosis) I clearly remember seeing my first documentary, kindly shared by the Dunkins, about the scourge of glioblastoma multiforme and one young Aussie man's battle against it. His key weapon, an ingenious and trailblazing dendritic cell vaccine, had been largely developed by his own father. The crazy thing? The father/doctor had been working on it for years halfway across the world, not knowing it would one day help his son! 

Logically, I understood the story was 'inspirational'. Still, emotionally it didn't have much of an impact: I had just suffered two seizures (courtesy of the inflammatory effects of radiotherapy), my vision was blurry, I was high on a kaleidoscope of prescription drugs. So when Libby told me a couple of weeks later that she had managed to put me on the waiting list for DCVax, an experimental treatment in the immunotherapy space, I produced a wry smile. 

'Sweet', I thought, 'but let's get through the basics first'.

(... and now that we have; thank you Libby!)

So here I am
The plan now is to lay siege on every single Terminator cell left in my brain. Yes, the latest scans have shown the two tumours are effectively dead. But incendiary GBM cells continue to float around like submersible land mines. Clearly my immune system has been struggling to ID and diffuse these. The chemotherapy had some success but also took much of the rest of me down with it.

This is where DCVax comes in: the white blood cells collected today will later be sent to a special lab where they will be trained, using a tumour sample from my 2017 resection, to take out the bad guys. That only leaves for me to bid them well (with Metallica's words):


Running, on our way hiding
You will pay dying
One thousand deaths
Running, on our way hiding
You will pay dying
One thousand deaths

Searching, 
Seek
AND DESTROY
​