On January 04th 2020 Gemma and her team met with MP Hilary Benn to raise awareness of her petition, the steps she intended to take to make #changeforgemma (as well as to ask him to raise some specific questions with the Secretary of State for Health).
Hilary was fantastic and confirmed that …. Gemma needs your help!
In order to progress the petition we need as many people as possible to contact their MPs to ask them to raise concerns directly with the Secretary of State for Health. To make this as easy as possible for you there are just 3 easy steps to follow:
1 – Visit: https://members.parliament.uk/ (pop your postcode in the search box and it will tell you who your MP is and what their email address is).
2 – Copy and paste the email template (included below) in to a new email making sure to add your MPs name, your name and address, where indicated with ‘**’.
3 – Click send... It’s that easy!
The more people who can contact their MP, the more questions the Secretary of State for Health will receive and the more seriously they are likely to take this problem.
Thank you so much as always for your time and support from Gemma and the team.
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Email Template Below
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Email Subject: Serious issues in the process around cancer patients being given the ‘No evidence of Active disease’ verdict.
Dear ** MPs Name**
As one of your constituents I am writing to ask that you contact the Health Secretary in relation to the process around cancer patients being given the ‘No evidence of Active disease’ verdict and the frequency of surveillance scans being reduced.
This cause has been highlighted via an emotive and valuable petition on change.org (change.org/fullbodycheck) set up by Gemma Sisson and Daniel Clark-Bland.
Background
Gemma was diagnosed with Pelvic Cancer in April 2018 and given the ‘no evidence of active disease’ (NED) verdict in January 2019. However only the affected and immediately surrounding area was scanned even though the cancer was in Gemma’s Lymph nodes and already at stage 3. In July 2019 Gemma was scanned again, the results came back clear and the decision was made that her surveillance scans would be moved from every 3 months to every 12 months.
However, from March 2019 Gemma had been suffering with chronic pain in her neck and upper back. After several unsuccessful visits to her GP and A&E, a private physio recommended she paid for a private MRI. The private scan took place in early August 2019 and showed her upper spine to be full of tumours which were causing the collapse of her spine. This was then identified as secondary stage 4 incurable cancer.
This spread of cancer was not picked up on any of the previous scans, as the scans didn’t cover her whole body. Had Gemma received a full body scan in July 2019 (or earlier) the spread would have been picked up and could have changed the prognosis for Gemma (and in turned enabled the NHS to avoid thousands of pounds in cost).
Gemma will now be at risk of paralysis and will undergo regular chemotherapy until the cancer ultimately takes her life.
The petition has received over 60,000 signatures and comments on the petition show that sadly Gemma’s case is not unusual. People are being led to believe that they are cancer free but this information is being given in many cases without a full body check being given.
The ask
With 1 in 2 of us in the UK likely to be affected by cancer we urge you to contact the Health Secretary with the ask that the process around the ‘No evidence of active disease’ verdict being given, without a full body check being carried out be comprehensively reviewed by key decision makers both in the Government and in the NHS. I would also encourage them to seek input from Gemma to enable her to contribute to positive lasting change.
Whilst Gemma is clear it won’t stop secondary cancers occurring, it will improve the chances that secondary cancers can be identified earlier and the outcome for both the patient and the NHS being less severe.
Yours sincerely
**Your name and address**