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Help Meridee fight the odds

  • Three months into treatment

      3 May 2019

    HI Everyone,

    Apologies for being so quiet after you all made such a beautiful gesture to help me access treatment. It's been a big life adjustment to say the least.

    With lots of wonderful help I've managed to access an immunotherapy drug, a Pd-1 inhibitor for those of you who like details. I received my first dose at the end of January and have a dose every three weeks.

    The dramatic life change means I'm now living across the ditch as the treatment was not available in New Zealand. I'm so fortunate that my tribe extends across to Australia too and I have great support to settle in there. Still lots of adjusting to be done.

    I am going to have monitoring scans every nine weeks so we can have a look at how the immunotherapy drug and the rogue cancer are battling things out. I had my first scan at the beginning of April and, although the results were a little mixed, the amazing news is that the two tumours in the liver had shrunk and I'm feeling pretty ecstatic about that. I'll provide more updates of the scans as the treatment continues.

    If you don't follow my blog feel free to have a look at my latest post about maintaining a social life while managing illness at https://thrillspillsandaheadscarf.blogspot.com/2019/05/how-i-made-sure-my-friends-didnt-escape.html

    And if you'd like to read my interpretation of how immunotherapy works please read March's post here https://thrillspillsandaheadscarf.blogspot.com/2019/03/immunotherapy-according-to-meridee.html

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  • A giant Thank You!

      22 December 2018

    Hi Everyone,

    These last couple of weeks have been very overwhelming for all of us involved in raising the funds to get this treatment started and I wanted to say a giant thank you for your role in that. Those who know me know that leaving me speechless is a very rare thing however that's exactly what has happened as I have seen the response to this page and my blog. Thank you is just not enough to really express my gratitude.

    To keep you as up to date as possible I can tell you that I am in the process of trying to organise meetings with hospitals overseas to discuss potential treatments. It's a relief to know there are still some options out there even if our system here has run out.

    For now I am looking forward to Christmas with my family in a nice little kiwi retreat.

    I wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.

    Love and gratitude from Meridee and my family and friends.

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