Dorset pensioner gets new lease of life in drug trial
Carol Wesson from Colehill in Wimborne was given just a year to live when she was diagnosed with aggressive cancer, mesothelioma.
The 73-year-old was diagnosed with the disease in 2017 as a result of being exposed to asbestos at work. Due to her poor prognosis, she was offered the chance to be part of a new trial funded by Stand Up To Cancer at Southampton’s Clinical Trials Unit, in the hope it could buy her more time.
“I’d never been ill in my life,” said Carol. “But when I was walking my dogs, I noticed I was getting breathless. When I was told I had cancer and found out I only had a year to live, I thought, ‘I had better go off and do as much as I can do.’”
Mesothelioma is traditionally treated with surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Until now, there have been few options available when patients no longer respond to treatment.
However, the trial, co-led by Romsey’s Professor Gareth Griffiths at the Cancer Research UK Southampton Clinical Trials Unit at the Centre for Cancer Immunology at the University of Southampton, offered Carol the chance to try a new immunotherapy drug, nivolumab, to see if it could prolong her life by boosting the body’s immune system to recognise and kill cancer cells.
Carol said, “When I signed up for the trial, I knew there was a chance I could benefit but I also knew I may have been given a placebo. Either way, I wanted to do it to help other people.
“During the trial, the nurse said to me, ‘There’s something about you Carol, your results are incredible.’ The tumour had reduced down to a very small amount and now I am about 90% back to normal. It completely changed my life. It’s kept me alive!”
Carol is backing Stand Up To Cancer, the joint national fundraising campaign from Cancer Research UK and Channel 4, that brings the UK together to speed up progress in life-saving cancer research. Now in its ninth year in the UK, it has raised more than £84 million, funding 59 clinical trials and projects involving over 19,000 cancer patients across the country.
Carol was one of 332 patients with mesothelioma in either the lung or the abdomen, who became part of the randomised study. 111 patients received a placebo and 221 were given nivolumab in the hope of extending their life expectancies.
Four years after her diagnosis, Carol is making the most of the extra time she has been given and is enjoying life without the breathlessness that first led to her diagnosis.
She said, “I’m enjoying walking my dogs again and living normally. A time will come when I have to take it all seriously but why do that now when I don’t have to?”