THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.

ONE of my first patients at Hammersmith Hospital, a lovely schoolteacher called Valerie, had come to me for a second opinion after she had been told there was nothing else that could be done.

She had ended up in an intensive care unit with severe complications from chemotherapy.

She had widespread melanoma with liver involvement. I was a very young professor, and the situation looked grave. The liver scan was just full of cancer.

Valerie had two small girls and the idea of them growing up without their mum filled me with dread.

Cancer has torn so many families apart and being the one to deliver the news has never got any easier over my decades in oncology.

Valerie was a fighter and never once lost hope. We used an experimental drug and after three months of treatment she responded. It was the beginnings of immunotherapy, which has now revolutionised the treatment of this type of cancer.

After six weeks of treatment my notes were bleak – “no significant response”. I remember, as though it was yesterday, my doom-laden conversation.

But a month later something was beginning to happen. Thirty-four years later she is still here and has never looked back.

I learnt a lot from Valerie, as I do from all my patients. Without hope, what have we got?

We all know someone who has lost their brave battle with this disease. I’ve spent almost half a century trying to ensure that patients have a fighting chance.

Sometimes just believing it can be done is half the battle.

That’s what we need now as a country – some belief.

We all know that the past few months have been tough for millions of people, but we are pulling through it and the economic consequences are yet to come. Dealing with that will be tough too.

Valerie never lost her faith. Neither should we.