Fleet pregnant mum who had blood cancer calls for 'personalised treatments'

  • Juliette Fletcher spoke to cancer patient, Charlotte Ralph.

A mother who was diagnosed with blood cancer while pregnant is calling for everyone to have access to personalised treatments. After several unsuccessful rounds of chemotherapy, Charlotte Ralph from Fleet, Hampshire, thought her options were running out. Family and friends stepped in to fund a new drug that saved her life, and she is now campaigning for every patient to have access to cancer treatments tailored to them.

Charlotte Ralph still has to take handfuls of tablets every day for the long-lasting side effects of her cancer treatments. Credit: ITV News Meridian

Charlotte Ralph was diagnosed in 2016 with Hodgkin Lymphoma, at the same time as finding out she was expecting her second child. An initial round of chemotherapy failed.

Charlotte Ralph said: "I went on to have five more different types of chemo over 18 months, and none worked."

A stem cell transplant was Charlotte's only hope for a long term cure, but to get to that point, her cancer needed to be stabilised.

"Radio therapy, to get me to stem cell treatment, did work, but it left me with side effects and a suppressed immune system, so the cancer came back," she added

"We were feeling hopeless, demoralised. I was getting sicker and sicker, spending a lot of time in hospital, we were feeling quite desperate."

A new drug called came to light, called Nivolumab, that had been shown to have positive results.

It is not available on the NHS for pre-transplant patients, so friends and family paid thousands of pounds for the treatment which saved her life.

Charlotte's struggle lasted four years. Now she and her family are looking forward to a holiday this summer and a much brighter future. Credit: ITV Meridian

Charlotte continued: "If the approach to my care had been personalised, I would have been spared months and months in hospital, reeling from side effects of all these different chemo treatments that didn't work.

"I could have gone straight to the treatment that did work, I would be in a much better place now."

Now, Cancer UK is campaigning for the next Government to make tackling cancer a top priority.

Shaun Walsh, Cancer Research UK said: "Charlotte's story is a powerful example of how cancer is personal and how important those personal treatments are.

"To support those treatments we need more investment in cancer research to understand what interventions we can make and how we can tailor those to each individual person."

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