Introducing Lorna

Lorna was diagnosed with stage IV bowel cancer de novo in July of 2018. She went from having no symptoms at all to being in really bad pain within a week or two.

"The first few months were scary,'' Lorna says. "My cancer had spread to my liver and there were also a couple of small spots on my lungs."

Lorna was put on chemo straight away and then had other tests which showed that her tumours were rarer ‘neuroendocrine’ tumours. These findings opened up a few more lines of treatment for Lorna.

Lorna had a blood biopsy in 2020 when she was close to exhausting all her treatment lines. This identified the ALK+ gene mutation. It came as a total surprise to both herself and her oncology team. At the time she was on immunotherapy but when that stopped working, her amazing team at the Royal Marsden managed to get her onto a specific ALK+ cancer inhibitor called Brigatinib. Amazingly, this is her seventh line of treatment.

“Across the seven treatments and 3.5 years I have had more than 60 rounds of treatment. I've also had a pulmonary embolism; an allergic reaction to an IV chemo which led to a stay as an in-patient for chemo every fortnight (not my favourite); I've lost all my hair and grown it back again; had a knot inside my vein on my PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line and have had over 150 bloods tests. Aren’t our bodies amazing?”