The CALIBRATION Trial is a study of durvalumab for advanced cancer of the food pipe. Details can be found here. It's being run at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, UK. I think I'm the last of the 20 or so patients they recruited for the trial. 

I have oesophogeal cancer, just above the junction with my stomach. As part of my earlier treatment, I was fitted with a stent to hold the oesophagus open, and allow me to eat "normal" food, albeit a soft diet. Unfortunately the stent had to be fitted across the oesophageal-stomach junction (GOJ) which means that, unlike most people, I have no functioning valve to stop stomach contents refluxing up my oesophagus if I should lie flat (or even bend down to put on my trousers!) This makes me vomit occasionally.

Before I had the stent, I had a feeding tube in one nostril, and down my gullet into my stomach. Liquid feeds pushed down it five or six times a day kept me alive for about four months while I had chemotherapy (FLOT). The original idea was to cut out the cancerous tissue and join my stomach directly to a shortened oesophagus. That would have been quite a major operation. That idea was abandoned once a scan showed the cancer had spread, as the op would not provide a complete cure.

This blog is partially for information, and partially because I ought to keep a diary for the trial. Please excuse me if it gets a little subjective at times.

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