RonnyAllan.NET – Community Newsletter JULY 2018

Summary for July

Personal News 

Another unusual month, after a bizarre June.  The chest infection has gone but still awaiting results of an x-ray to confirm.  July was supposed to be partly holiday but that was cancelled due to illness.  The chest infection caused a 4kg weight loss and only half of this has returned to date.  I also got the results of my first ever Ga68 PET Scan and this resulted in an article below. No longer a boring stable patient but nothing that needs doing imminently. Many thanks to all the messages which continue to arrive both public and privately, I’m most grateful.  I received my 100th Lanreotide earlier in the month and I’m still here following my 8 year ‘cancerversary’ on 26 July 2018.  Many of you are still here too – thanks for the wonderful comments to this Facebook post – click here.

NET News

PRRT in UK took a step forward when both the Scottish Medicines Consortium and NICE approved the drug (Lu-177) for use in Scotland and England respectively.  Wales and Northern Ireland will continue to access elsewhere in UK via an NHS inter-region funds transfer until facilities are in place.  That said, currently there are no PRRT facilities in Scotland (that I know of) and very few in England.  Watch this space.

Blog Site Activity in July

Due to the vagaries of Facebook inner workings, some of these articles created or updated in July 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.

Neuroendocrine Cancer: Ga68 PET Scan – a game changer?	G68 PET Scans – a game changer?  My latest article following the results of my first Ga68 PET scan. I’m no longer a ‘boring’ stable patient.
	Neuroendocrine Cancer – Mesenteric and Retroperitoneal Fibrosis – an unsolved mystery? a long-awaited article about something which has plagued me since diagnosis but has now had an impact on my potential treatment strategy.
	“What are you doing this afternoon” Words which triggered my diagnosis.  I got a scan.
	PRRT Update – patients please read and advise on new locations.  Contains the patient provided update on new locations for insurance funded PRRT in USA.
	Lanreotide – 100 shots! My 100th Lanreotide birthday!
	Will you vote for Ronny Allan? I need your votes to progress into the finals of the WEGO Health Awards.  Please see how you can help inside this article.
	Neuroendocrine Cancer – tumour markers and hormone levels – did I miss any?
	177Lu-DOTA-EB-TATE – Long-lasting radionuclide therapy for advanced neuroendocrine tumors proves effective – news of a new PRRT trial
	RonnyAllan.NET – Community Newsletter June 2018 – in case you missed it.

There have been many distractions in July 2018 but a respectable ~28,000 views.  Here are the top 10 most read articles which contributed to July’s figures:

Neuroendocrine Cancer – normally slow but always sneaky		2,730
Home page / Archives		1,977
Neuroendocrine Cancer: Ga68 PET Scan – a game changer?		1,506
Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer – Home Page		1,047
Diagnosed with Neuroendocrine Cancer? – 10 questions to ask your doctor (and where to find a NET Specialist)		943
“What are you doing this afternoon”		678
Neuroendocrine Cancer – Ronny Allan: Background to my Diagnosis and Treatment		627
RonnyAllan.NET – Community Newsletter JUNE 2018		620
Neuroendocrine Neoplasms – Grade and Stage (incorporating WHO 2017 changes)		619
177Lu-DOTA-EB-TATE – Long-lasting radionuclide therapy for advanced neuroendocrine tumors proves effective		606

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.

Ronny Allan’s Group

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 you can be processed quicker). As at 30 July 2018, there were almost 1400 people in the group. I might cap at 2000 to maintain the integrity of the site. 

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 and animal pictures 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’m working on an invite to attend a pharma event in October at the guest of a major pharma company. I will update you when I’m allowed to release details.
• In July, I continued a dialogue in a patient app development coordinated by NET Patient Foundation.  That said, I missed the meeting due to illness. 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.
• 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/) – They 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.
• Some of you will remember the invite to Berlin for a ‘Patients included’ event,  This was not a NET Cancer event but I was invited due to my wider healthcare advocate work.  That was a tough gig but great experience.  There’s a summary file here and I have been invited back next year and my involvement is still being worked out.

Article features

• 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 179 times on my personal account which led to over 123,000 views.  I was mentioned 101 times by other tweeters, 1909 people looked at my profile and I gained 39 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!  They recently listed me as one of the top 5 bloggers to watch in 2018.  This is great awareness and good feedback for my own efforts.  Read more here.  Also note the 2018 voting is now open.  If you would like to vote for one of my five nominations, please see here for details – click here.

Social Media and Stats

Blog Milestone.  At the end of July, I accelerated past 640,000 blog views! Thank you all so much ♥ Keep sharing!  On track for one million in the latter half of 2019.

Facebook Milestone.  Surpassed 6430 followers by the end of July 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: ~6427.  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: ~4622 / 3602 Follow me here @RonnyAllan1 / @NETCancerBlog
• Total Blog Views: ~645,000
• Blog with most views: ~19,039 – 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: 10,366 in April/May  2018.  Why the spike? …..  mainly “Neuroendocrine Cancer – tricks, no treats” 
• Most blog views in one month: 35,148 in May 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 JULY.  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

Disclaimer

My Diagnosis and Treatment History

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