Kevin Jones, Christie patient

Retired police officer Kevin Jones first knew something was wrong while on holiday in Lanzarote. His leg started swelling up and Kevin said he couldn’t see his knee or his ankle.

As soon as Kevin got home, he went straight to Accident and Emergency and was immediately hospitalised in Blackburn. He had two deep vein thromboses (DVTs) in his legs and a pulmonary embolism on one lung.

At the hospital in Blackburn, Kevin’s team did some biopsies and unfortunately, they found a tumour. The tumour was on one of the major veins to the groin area – this was the cause of the swelling and the DVTs in Kevin’s leg.

Kevin was referred to The Christie and started chemotherapy straight away. But a few months later, a new scan showed that his tumour had begun to grow again.

Both Kevin and his wife were devastated by the news and the impact it could have on their family. There was no further standard treatment for his very rare form of cancer, but thankfully Kevin was offered a place on one of our clinical trials almost immediately.

The clinical trial was for patients with tumours that are difficult to see, who had previously had unsuccessful chemotherapy and for whom there was no agreed second line of treatment. That described Kevin’s cancer perfectly.

For Kevin, the trial offered him new hope of improved treatment and more time with his family. The goal was to see if one combination of chemotherapy drugs was better than a different drug and effective for longer, or if it increased the time until patients needed to change to a different treatment.

So far, the experience has been positive for Kevin. His tumour has shrunk dramatically and he’s been able to spend more quality time with his family.

“First and foremost, there’s been an 86% reduction in the size of the tumour. That in itself was obviously a major win.
“It was quite good to have scans every 8 weeks because that’s a bit of a comfort blanket really. It sort of reinforces your confidence that things are working, which is quite a major consideration from a patient’s point of view.
“When I got told about the clinical trial, it was just like, why wouldn’t you want to get involved, I’d be crazy not to?
“I’m so grateful to have had the chance to be part of this trial – it absolutely made a difference to my life.
“I would say to anyone who is in a position to donate to this, you’ll never know just how much of a difference you could make to other peoples. lives. So please help if you can.
“Whilst I can’t be cured, I have shown some fantastic results on the trial. It just goes to show that research does work but can’t be conducted without your help.”

  - Kevin Jones, Christie patient

You can support cancer patients like Kevin with rare hepato-pancreato-biliary (HPB) tumours by helping fund our new clinical research fellow. A donation today could help improve treatment options for cancer patients and, most importantly, survival rates.