Week 1 at Hallwang Clinic

So that’s a week at the clinic over already and it seems to have flown in. First of all I’d like to tell you a bit about Tracey’s treatment.

Tracey’s Treatment

Immunotherapy is a relatively new cancer treatment and has been approved for various cancer types having been successful in trials. Unfortunately this hasn’t been approved for cervical cancer in the UK yet but ongoing trials should hopefully see it available in the future. There have been successful trials for cervical cancer in the US and I believe it has just been approved over there.

Immunotherapy boosts the bodies natural defences for fighting cancer. When you have cancer your immune system can’t see the cancer cells and so doesn’t know these are bad cells. Immunotherapy highlights the cancer cells as bad cells so your immune system can then destroy them.

Before we arrived, the clinic requested tumour samples so they could check for certain “markers”. They then design a treatment plan based on what they find.

Over the curse of the 2 weeks here she will be given a vaccine which is designed to train her immune system to recognise the receptors on her tumour as being foreign and to attack them.

She is also given an immunotherapy drug called Ipililumab which is designed to activate the immune system. This is an anti CTLA-4 drug that inhibits the receptors on tumours that inhibit the immune system.

In combination with this she is given an anti PD-L1 drug called Nivolumab . Nivolumab works as a checkpoint inhibitor, blocking a signal that would have prevented activated T-cells from attacking the cancer, this allows the immune system to clear the cancer.

These 2 immunotherapy drugs have been shown to work well in combination with each other.

As well as this Tracey is given daily infusions to protect her stomach, liver and kidneys.

We will need to return to the clinic 3 or 4 more times depending on how the treatment is working for her but these visits will only be for 3 days to get the immunotherapy infusions. The main part of the 2 weeks here is taken up by the vaccination process.

Our stay so far.

The clinic is really nice, the food is great and the staff are brilliant. We were given a nice apartment a stones throw from the clinic. The heat has been an issue and we had to change rooms to one that wasn’t directly in the sun all day as our room was like a sauna!

Tracey had shown signs of an infection when we arrived so she was put on antibiotics and treatment had to stop for a few days. They factor things like this in to your time staying here as they see this all the time so a few days to clear an infection doesn’t affect the treatment plan.

She was sick one day and the doctor thought this was caused by the antibiotic they gave her so they changed it and with a bit of rest she recovered. She is still quite tired day to day and her back pain has been an issue now and again but we have managed to stay on top of it for the most part.

It’s been about 30 degrees here everyday and we’ve managed to get out and about on a few occasions when Tracey has been able. Last Sunday we drove to a nice little place a few miles down the road called Freudenstadt. Pics below.