RonnyAllan.NET – Community Newsletter April 2018 – Ronny Allan

30Apr 2018 by Ronny Allan 9 Comments

Headlines

1. Patients Included. I’m a big believer that patients should be included in all aspects of healthcare and I can very much relate to any initiative that promotes this. I’m therefore pleased to have been listed as a Patients Included accredited site providing further EXTERNAL awareness opportunities – read about this here.

2. I’ve accepted an appointment to the Strategic Advisory Board on MultiMed Inc, the owner of Cancer Knowledge Network based in Canada who have featured my articles in the past (https://cancerkn.com/) – It also publishes a magazine called Current Oncology which is Medline listed. This is not a NET site but my inclusion will no doubt raise the profile for us. Read more here.

3. My blog site is 4 years old. When I set my blog up on 29 Apr 2014, I never imagined for one second it would be anything other than an obscure and niche site getting a couple of hits per day. I’m therefore really grateful to those who are still supporting me including my most recent followers. It’s your support that inspires me to write the posts and then offer them up as awareness messages or simply words to help patients. Happy 4th birthday to my blog site!

4. My Facebook site (NET Cancer Blog) tipped over 6000 likes – I’m sensing a slight slow down in Facebook growth against a backdrop of a 20% increase in blog hits – go figure! Thanks for your support on this page – if you know someone who might like this page, feel free to invite them or share this post. Many thanks

I caught this news in my social media NET

For patients in UK (England in particular), the long wait for routine access to PRRT could hopefully be coming to an end, despite it being approved in Europe (EU countries) since last year. The NICE meeting was held in April but to date there has been no release of information about what was discussed and what will happen next. There might be ‘commercial’ niceties and attendee confidentially involved and the NICE website simply states that a meeting was held – nothing more. Read more by clicking here.
The UK is launching a NET dietitian support initiative (DING – Dietitians Interested in NETs Group) and their first meeting will be held next month. The initiative is led by Tara Whyand and supported by the NET Patient Foundation. Access to “NET aware” dietitians is an unmet need in many places and I’m delighted to be attending to provide a patient story to support this excellent initiative. I have mentioned this unmet need many times in many posts and I’d like to thank Tara for moving the issue forward. Read more here.
Researchers are testing the drug Sapanisertib to see if it can halt the progression of pancreatic NETs (pNETs) which cannot be surgically removed, have not responded to other treatment, and have spread to other parts of the body. Read more here.

Blog Site Activity

Due to the vagaries of Facebook inner workings, some of these articles created or updated in Apr 2018 may not have even shown on your timeline. So, ICYMI …….here’s a summary with links, includes updated blogs. You can actually sign up to receive my blog articles direct to your inbox when published – subscribe here April 2018 was a record-breaking month with the biggest number of views in one month ever.

	Sapanisertib – a drug in trials for pancreatic NETs – read more here
	Major restructure and add-on – Neuroendocrine Cancer – Hormones – read more here
	Update – Somatostatin Receptors – read more here
	Update – The Surveillance Merry-go-round – Read more here
	RonnyAllan.NET – Community Newsletter March 2018 – in case you missed it.
	Update to Carcinoid vs Neuroendocrine

Despite a lack of posts due to external activities, BUT ….April 2018 is now a record-breaking month with more than 30,000 views for the first time. Here are the top 10 most read articles which contributed to April’s figures:

Steve Jobs – the most famous Neuroendocrine Cancer Ambassador we NEVER had		1,693
Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer – Home Page		1,330
Neuroendocrine Cancer Syndromes – Early Signs of a Late Diagnosis		1,007
Diagnosed with Neuroendocrine Cancer? – 10 questions to ask your doctor		973
Neuroendocrine Cancer – no treats, just tricks		933
Background to my Diagnosis and Treatment		851
Neuroendocrine Cancer – Hormones		813
Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer – 7 tips for conquering fear		801
Lanreotide vs Octreotide		764
Neuroendocrine Cancer: Somatostatin Receptors		745

Other Activity

I’m constantly looking for opportunities to spread awareness and advance the cause of Neuroendocrine Cancer patients. Thank you all so much for the support in helping me do this.

Please join my 2018 awareness campaign event here (select ‘Going’)

I continue to receive a steady flow of private contacts, mainly from patients seeking information. I don’t have an issue with private contact but please note my disclaimer
Please also note that due to sheer numbers of requests, I cannot accept telephone or video calls on a one to one basis. Please just message me and I will respond – see “Send Message” button when you CLICK HERE. (also please ‘Like’ this page if you have not already done so). On a personal note, please do not send me friend requests on my personal Facebook page, I get so many and want to keep this little area of ‘sanity’ free of NET stuff. I have so many other sites you can contact me on – all inside the newsletter.
The number of non-patients contacting me for other reasons (mainly to help with something) continues to grow and this is producing some great publicity and awareness.
As the number of people contacting me has increased so much, it’s becoming very difficult to answer all questions myself. I’ve therefore set up a chat room here (I’m not the only one who can answer questions!). This is not like many forums, it’s a place to make people feel safe and to discuss without many of the other distractions that can be found on forums and is moderated accordingly. I welcome all types of NET, people from any country and I also welcome carers/caregivers and medical people. It’s also a place where I will bring in expertise to chat about various issues. The first online chat was held on 28 Feb about the problems NET patients can have with being unable to produce sufficient digestive enzymes and the treatment to correct this issue PERT (Creon etc) Join the chat group by clicking here (please answer the simple questions so I can process quicker). As at 30 Apr 2018, there were 791 people in the group.

New Audiences for NET Cancer

I said it was my aim to find new audiences for NETs rather than just share stuff within our own community. Sharing memes between patients is not my scene – I want to extend awareness much wider than that to ensure we move away from being a niche condition that no-one has heard of. I’m doing this all the time, although it may not always be apparent.

Engagements and Invites

I have been invited to join a medical conference in Berlin as a patient advocate. This is not a NET conference so is very exciting for me as a patient activist and speaker. I’ve been asked to contribute to 3 separate activities:
- Patient Doctor Communications – read more here
- The Changing Face of Palliative Care – read more here.
- My uninvited guest: perspective on chronic disease in young and old – read more here
I’m getting ready to present a patient experience story in May to a newly established NET Dietitians group in UK – coordinated by the wonderful Tara Whyand. Very excited about this, a wonderful initiative to tackle an unmet need for patients.
In April, I attended a meeting coordinated by NET Patient Foundation about a patient app. Apparently I’m on the project team and happy to help if I can. I always react positively to requests for help from INCA’s national NET affiliates, providing I have the bandwidth available to support.
Facebook has been in the news regarding the security of user’s data. I am pretty well up to date with security although determined hackers are always a risk. I take this threat seriously and my personal account is as protected as it can be. Any signs of suspicious activity on my blog, Facebook pages and group, or indeed any of my social media sites, is dealt with robustly in order to protect you and me. I managed to get a quote in the WEGO Health article about the issue. Check it out here. Please be careful sharing personal data including in Facebook closed groups.
In Feb, my blog site was recommended to health professionals by Dr Jane Maher who is the Chief Medical Officer for Macmillan Cancer Support, one of the biggest Cancer Support organisations in the world. This was out of the blue but gratefully accepted! Dr Maher continues to cite this site in April for contributing to general cancer awareness and I’m thankful for that.
Article features.
- NET Research Foundation featured an article I wrote about the importance of clinical research, in particular how patients find out about clinical trials that might be of interest to them. Read more here:
- Cure Magazine. I’ve been accepted as a ‘Cure Today’ contributor which means my articles will get a wider distribution than they do now. Cure Magazine has a readership of 1 million. Click here to read more. In October, I was featured in Cure Magazine twice. I have been so busy in 2017 but I have plans to increase my presence there in 2018:

Twitter. I’m ‘extremely’ active on twitter and I find a lot of research stuff there, in addition to new audiences. I also use it to support other conditions and it’s mostly returned (i.e. others help with NET awareness and are made aware of NETs in the process). There are people regularly retweeting my stuff who do not have a personal interest in NETs and I am now regularly copied in on many tweets by those wishing to use my account as a vehicle for dissemination. In the last month, I tweeted 113 times on my personal account which led to over 94,000 views. I was mentioned 91 times by other tweeters, 2208 people looked at my profile and I gained 35 new followers. My tweet “Ignore this post” remains the most tweeted article about NETs ever posted on twitter. Check it out – click here.
Daily Newsletter from my twitter feed (Nuzzel). There is so much on twitter that I could swamp the community Facebook site so I started a twitter newsletter via an app called Nuzzel which seeks out stuff I normally like. This has been a huge success from my point of view resulting in an increase in blog hits and to a wider population than just NETs. Click this link and sign up if you think this is something you’d be interested in receiving – you don’t need to have a twitter account to read, just sign up with an email.
WEGO. I continue to be featured by ‘external’ organisations such as WEGO and my PODCAST is reaching new audiences – click here. In March, I managed to get into a very well contested short list for an article about the use of Facebook for health communities in light of the recent bad press for the service. The recent awards will continue to showcase my work which has the effect of spreading Neuroendocrine Cancer awareness to NEW audiences in addition to enriching my experience as a Patient Leader. WEGO is a fantastic organisation!

Social Media and Stats

Blog Milestone. At the end of April, I accelerated past 555,000 blog views! Thank you all so much ♥ Keep sharing! On track for one million by the end of 2019.

Facebook Milestone. Surpassed 6000 followers by the end of April but my projected numbers are down so far in 2018 (despite a 20% increase in blog hits). The Facebook page is now my biggest outlet for awareness and education so please recommend this page to anyone you think would be interested. There are buttons to share the page and invite others to ‘Like’ it.

Also check out my sister Facebook sites here (go to these pages and click on ‘Like’)

These are fallback sites to counter the Facebook algorithm whereby you may not see all my posts on the main site (click on the links to see the pages)

Ronny Allan’s Community

Neuroendocrine Cancer Awareness and Networking

Instagram

I’m expanding into Instagram to see how that goes. I’ve amassed over 250 followers to date. Initially, I’ll just be posting pictures of things that inspire me, mostly scenic photos of places I’ve been or want to go! I really enjoy these pictures, I hope you do too. You can follow me here: Click here to go to my Instagram page

Community Statistics (the measurement of my efforts on your behalf)

Figures

Facebook – 6028. This is a key outlet for my blog – please encourage others to like my page (if you’d like to know how to use your Facebook to invite others to my page – let me know, I can provide you with a step by step approach).
Twitter – 4480 / 3480 Follow me here @RonnyAllan1 / @NETCancerBlog
Total Blog Views: 555,416
Blog with most views: 16,855 – Neuroendocrine Cancer – Early Signs of a Late Diagnosis
Most blog views in one day: 3551 on 31 October 2017. Why the spike? ….. “Neuroendocrine Cancer – tricks, no treats”
Most blog views in one week: 10,004 in October/November 2017. Why the spike? ….. “Neuroendocrine Cancer – tricks, no treats”
Most blog views in one month: 30,558 in April 2018. Why the spike? See above.

Summary

An amazing amount of awareness and hopefully, support for others. However, I cannot do this without you guys liking, commenting and sharing! The likes give me motivation, the comments and private messages give me inspiration or at least a chance to explain further – and they also keep me humble. The sharing gives me a bigger platform. A bigger platform generates more awareness.

Thanks for your great support in April. Onwards and upwards!

Thanks for reading

Ronny

I’m also active on Facebook. Like my page for even more news. I’m also building up this site here: Ronny Allan

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Remember ….. in the war on Neuroendocrine Cancer, let’s not forget to win the battle for better quality of life!