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Are we near a cure for cancer?

Seriously... podcast presenter Rhianna Dhillon recommends Find Me a Cure, a new episode which might just reveal the path to a cure for a form of leukaemia.

There’s a ripple effect to cancer. There are physical and mental repercussions and from the moment of diagnosis they don’t stop coming. In my experience it’s almost impossible to think about every part of it at once. It’s like your head would explode if you could comprehend the multitude of consequences in one moment. Instead, it’s as if you have to grieve each moment as it comes.

Rhianna Dhillon

That’s why Find Me a Cure is such an essential listen – it’s one of those rare programmes about cancer that really describes what a drawn out, bewildering journey it can be. It walks you through the timeline from diagnosis to treatment. And to hope.

Presenter Simon Cox was at his desk when he received an urgent phone call from his GP, telling him to go to hospital straightaway. Suddenly, aged 37, he was starting down that path.

Simon was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia 13 years ago. CLL is a disease of the immune system and the most common form of leukaemia. Currently, it’s most frequently treated with chemotherapy.

In Find Me a Cure, Simon beautifully melds his experience of the disease with those of others as he follows a medical trial based at St James's Hospital in Leeds, which uses a unique combination of drugs to defeat CLL.

A cure for cancer?

Simon Cox reports on developments in the treatment of the most common form of leukemia.

Andy, one of the first patients to be recruited onto the trial, was extremely ill before joining.

“I started to lose my hearing, I had massively high temperatures, night sweats and my glands in my neck got as big as my head,” he says. “It was very scary. I started thinking, ‘Am I on my way out?’”

“It frightens you to death,” says Richard of his CLL diagnosis over a decade ago. “I probably went into denial.”

But now, thanks to Richard Hillman, Professor of Experimental haematology at St James’s Hospital, hope could be on the horizon.

"I've sat in front of patients for over 20 years who I know are going to die of CLL, and as a doctor that's really hard," he says. He hopes his new trial will mean having far fewer of these conversations.

When Seriously… spoke to the documentary producer Jim Frank, he told us “This is a good news cancer story. And we don’t get many of those.”

I couldn’t agree more and it’s well worth a listen. It made me feel like I can breathe again.

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