Stonehaven mum's brutal reality: no NHS cure, so she must buy more time abroad

Press and Journal

a day ago

Helen Swan's voice is quiet yet urgent when she answers the phone at her home in Stonehaven.
It doesn't take long to understand why.
When we spoke, the 54-year-old mum was just days away from boarding a flight to Frankfurt, where doctors would inject powerful chemotherapy drugs directly into the tumours spreading through her lungs, bones, liver and soft tissues.
It's a procedure called TACE — targeted arterial chemoembolisation — and Helen believes it is her only real hope of slowing down her cancer.
She knows from experience that as soon as the drugs enter her body, she's in a race against time to get home before the side effects strike: searing nausea, crushing exhaustion and days where she can barely stand.
Yet for Helen, the urgency lies not just in the cancer invading her body, but in something else – the knowledge that if she can't keep raising the money to pay for each £6,000 trip herself, her treatment will stop.
TACE is not available on the NHS for the rare form of cancer Helen has been diagnosed with. Doctors in the UK have also warned her she is wasting her time with the treatment, saying it won't save her.
Helen doesn't see it like that. While she still holds on to the hope that TACE might one day cure her, what she really wants is more time — time she can spend with her children, especially her youngest son, Harry, just 12 years old.
'It's not easy — it's really hard,' she says. 'I've got to do it. I've got no other options. Either I do this, or I can wait for it to take me over, which will happen very quickly — and I don't want to do that. I need to keep trying.'
It's a fight she never imagined when she was first diagnosed nearly five years ago.
In 2019, Helen was told she had stage 2B endocervical adenocarcinoma — a rare, aggressive form of cervical cancer that had already spread into surrounding tissue.
She underwent months of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and internal brachytherapy at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
She was given the all-clear in August 2020. But a year later, a routine scan revealed 16 tiny tumours scattered through her lungs.
The cancer had returned and was now classed as incurable.
Doctors gave her about six months to live.
Offered palliative chemotherapy, Helen made the difficult decision to say no.
'It might have bought me a bit of time,' she says. 'But the side effects would have left me too unwell to do anything with my son. I didn't want to spend what time I had in bed.'
Instead, she pieced together her own protocol — researching everything she could about boosting her immune system.
She changed her diet, took over-the-counter supplements and began regular mistletoe infusions at Camphill Wellbeing Trust in Aberdeen.
Her doctors were sceptical — mistletoe infusions aren't routinely available on the NHS and are classed as complementary.
But no one could argue with the result: three extra years of life she was never expected to have.
'I made memories with Harry,' she says of that time. 'I was able to travel with him, swim in the sea at Stonehaven, visit friends in Greece and Sweden — just live a normal life as much as I could.'
By the end of last year, Helen's cancer started to spread again — pushing into her bones, liver and soft tissues.
She found Professor Thomas Vogl at Frankfurt University Hospital. He specialises in TACE — a procedure only approved on the NHS for patients who have primary liver cancer, not for secondary tumours that have spread from elsewhere.
In simple terms, TACE involves feeding a tiny tube through an artery in her leg and injecting a high dose of chemotherapy straight into a tumour.
Unlike conventional chemo, which floods the whole body, this targets the tumour directly — cutting off its blood supply and killing cancer cells.
'It's like being poisoned for days,' Helen says.
After her first treatment, scans showed a 10% reduction in a tumour pressing on her spine — so severe it had threatened to paralyse her.
'Before I started, I felt like I was hanging on by my fingernails. I was losing the use of my leg and arm. Now, I can walk with a stick. I can drive my car. I can be mum again.'
Her most recent scans showed further reductions in both her spine and liver tumours.
But every session brings brutal side effects, and the fear that missing just one could undo her progress.
A single trip to Frankfurt costs Helen around £5,000 to £6,000, covering the procedure itself, flights, hotel and a companion to help her get home. As a single mum unable to work, she has no savings left.
'It's terrifying to think that if I can't raise this money, I can't go — and I'll start to go downhill again within a few weeks. I don't have time on my side.'
So far, generous donations through her GoFundMe page and local fundraising events have covered three trips. She needs many more.
How many?
'It's case by case,' she explains. 'Some people go 10 or 12 times if it keeps working.'
Through it all, her anchor is her children: Sam, 29, Grace, 22, and especially Harry, still just a boy.
'He was six when I was first diagnosed,' she says. 'He's come along on the ride with me. He knows enough, but not everything. He sees me as strong, and I want to keep it that way for as long as I can.'
Helen adds: 'Somebody else asked me that too, and I really, genuinely don't feel angry. I think I'd rather it happened to me than to somebody I love — I'm a strong person. And I hope I'm showing my children, or anyone else, that no matter what life throws at you, you just wade through it and you don't give up.'
Helen praises the NHS teams that saved her life in the early days — but says the system is limited by what it can fund.
'Germany is about 10 years ahead of the UK in cancer treatment,' she says. 'It's frustrating that the treatment is there, but we can't access it — you have to go abroad or have the money somehow.'
She wants policymakers to listen: 'People shouldn't be written off just because the treatment isn't in the NHS box. Even if they can't fund it, they should support people however they can.'
After nearly five years fighting, Helen has learned more than she ever wanted to know about cervical cancer — hers is so rare that it doesn't even show up on standard screening tests. She wants other women to know that even regular screening can sometimes miss it.
'There's no handbook for cancer,' she says. 'You have to advocate for yourself. Learn as much as you can, ask questions, don't take no for an answer. You know your body — listen to it.'
Above all, Helen hopes her story shows others they don't have to give up. She tells of one woman who went to Professor Vogl's clinic with just weeks to live — and is now cancer free. It's an outcome Helen would love to see for herself.
But she's clearsighted on the obstacles ahead, and how quickly things could change if the money runs out.
'I just want more time — more days to be Harry's mum. I'm not ready to die. I've got far too much to live for.'