Alan Buckle: Cardiff resident, Phase 1 cancer treatment trialist and keen golfer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn late 2005, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It had escaped into my bloodstream and was both aggressive and incurable.<\/p>\n
In an effort to make the best of my prognosis, I received hormone injections, radiotherapy and two batches of chemotherapy. But by 2012, options were running out. Further treatment would have required long journeys into England, and held no guarantees.<\/p>\n
Then I was offered a test to see if I was suitable for a drugs trial at the Velindre Cancer Centre, a pioneering institution which collaborates with Cardiff University.<\/p>\n
I have two sons. Improved treatments for prostate cancer could not be more important to me.<\/p>\n
Four-and-a-half years have passed, and the treatment I have received so close to home has been outstanding. It goes beyond the tests, consent forms, expectation management and straight answers. There\u2019s been whole-hearted support, a lot of laughter and some truly special people.<\/p>\n
The Velindre team of doctors, researchers and specialists are the \u201chope\u201d that keeps myself and others like me going in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t pretend it\u2019s easy. Being a clinical trialist requires a positive attitude, a sense of humour and an acceptance that there are, still, no guarantees. Oh, and a good book comes in useful \u2013 you can be on the ward for 14 hours at time.<\/p>\n
But when first diagnosed back in 2005, I was given four years to live. Over the course of my treatment at Cardiff, I have gained a good few more \u2013 and four lovely grandchildren, all of whom have been born since I have been undergoing treatment.<\/p>\n
When you\u2019ve been given almost a decade in which to enjoy the gifts of life, finding the strength to go on comes that much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alan Buckle: Cardiff resident, Phase 1 cancer treatment trialist and keen golfer.","protected":false},"author":1080,"featured_media":2586,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,142,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardiff-connect","category-donate","category-news"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1080"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2565"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2587,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565\/revisions\/2587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}