Advice on moving hospitals
Hi there,
I've been lurking in this forum for a year or so now and its brought me great comfort and knowledge and so firstly - thank you to all of you!
I wanted to seek some advice on moving hospitals but first a quick bit of background. My partner was diagnosed in May 2020 with stage 4 bowel cancer at 28. That year, 10 rounds of Folfox shrunk his bowel tumour to be operable, his liver mets to be ablatable and zapped a lymph-node met.
In May last year, 2021, scans showed a number of small lung mets. Until recently Folfox was successfully treating these too. This has now stopped working and he'll be moving to Folfori very soon.
His oncologist has strongly recommended adding on Avastin. At his current hospital, UCH, this is almost £1500 per cycle (£3000 per month). His oncologist has asked Royal Free to take on his treatment, which would reduce costs to £300 per cycle (!!).
Royal Free is actually closer to us and obviously moves us into something much more affordable. But we have just heard that Royal Free will not take on his case on the basis of needing Avastin alone.
I know there is lots of discussion about Avastin but I wanted to see if anyone had any advice about moving hospitals in general (is there any criteria or additional way to explore this except through your oncologist) and if anyone had heard of or overcome this feedback we're getting that Avastin is not a good enough reason?
Safe to say if we can't move, we can't afford it! So any advice big or small, directly or indirectly related is really appreciated.
Thank you so much, Hannah