Sniff Cancer

A wonderful evening at my old workplace supporting a Medical Detection Dogs Charity evening reception hosted by my friend Claire and her diabetes alert dog Pal.

Claire gave a touching speech about how Pal has changed the life of her family over the past five years. Before Pal Claire's sons would often return home from primary school to find their Mum collapsed on the floor after a hypo and the paramedics were called out around four times a week at a cost of £500 each time to the NHS.

As young carers her sons were bullied at school and found it hard to concentrate on studies worrying about their mum. Today Pal looks after Claire and retrieves her glucose level testing kit and paws a panic button if she is unable. Pal has alerted Claire over 12,000 times in five years and he has dramatically changed her life from a shy, nervous person to a confident and independent one as she lives with Type 1 diabetes and end renal failure having dialysis treatment three times a week. Claire spends all her free time raising awareness for the medical detection dogs charity and her energy is boundless.

It was an honour to meet Bio Detection Dog Florian and her trainer Rob this evening demonstrating cancer detection. See my (poorly lit) video on Instagram here. Dogs have a sense of smell that can detect parts per trillion. Basically if you imagine humans can usually detect 1 teaspoon of sugar in a cup of tea and by comparison dogs can detect that teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic sized swimming pools!

The bio detection dogs showed us cancer detection for prostate cancer among urine samples of other diseases. Florian positively detected the sample in half a second! We heard how prostate cancer has a 75% false negative reading with traditional biopsy tests. That means for every 4 men tested positively only 1 will have cancer. Bio detection dogs are 100% positive and are now being trialled by the NHS. Testing for bacteria and malaria detection are in clinical trials and soon Parkinson's via the Michael J Fox Foundation.

It was so amazing to see the bio detection dogs demo and catch up with some familiar faces. Hard to believe my relationship with the charity all started with a Christmas card photoshoot last August. I'm looking forward to supporting the charity on their Christmas Market stall soon. Watch this space.