Healing with Personalised Cellular Therapy

Healing with Personalised Cellular Therapy

By Lisa Attias

What struck me first, when I came across a video about Dendritic Cell Therapy at a Yes to Life conference, was the possibility of healing as opposed to dealing with symptom relief.

For ten years I had mistletoe therapy after a tiny melanoma showed up on my skin. Then the melanoma suddenly jumped into my liver and called itself Stage Four in May 2021. Seven months of an immuno drug, and then a couple of months with a clinical trial did nothing to stop the growth of the tumours.

Treatment for the Individual

Dendritic cell therapy involves a cancer ‘vaccine’ made from my own blood. Cells are extracted, ‘trained and multiplied’ to identify my specific cancer to my immune system. This medical phenomenon seemed to me, when I discovered it, to reflect an intensely challenging personal process of trying to be deeply myself, as an individual. I wrote in my newsletter about how I stepped away from The Royal Marsden, while recognising that this is not the right way for everyone.

Fundraising

This treatment is not yet available in the UK and has enormous costs. Click on the link to see the clinic that I travel to. BUT, encouraged by friends and family I knew that the only way forward was to be immensely hopeful.

Yes to Life have a Personalised Fundraising Scheme (see details and video here); all money donated to a PFS goes to the person and choice treatment it is intended for and Yes to Life can help people understand how the scheme works. However I did not realise that Yes to Life had this service at the time, and set up my own JustGiving Page.

Feelings of despair are transforming into hope. I have been astounded and grateful by the deep kindness of people, including many anonymous donors . Offline fundraising has included an offer of a curry supper club; a community ceilidh (where two bands played free); a sponsored walk; and someone who I used to babysit for as a teenager sent me £1000!

This is a story of cancer becoming a community affair. Yes, it was an enormous threshold for me to move from a very personal illness to a public sharing, but this is my path.

Do you feel that you have come to a closed door and this would be right for you to look into? Everyone’s journey is as individual as they are.

P.S. I am doing well, but am still fundraising, still travelling to Germany every five weeks for Dendritic Cell Therapy. 

See Yes to Life page on Dendritic Therapy: https://yestolife.org.uk/therapy/dendritic-cell-therapy/

Listen to Yes to Life’s Radio Show on mistletoe with Dr Nasha Winters: https://yestolife.org.uk/radio_shows/kiss-of-life/