Andrew's Health Update - January 2021

[Music] do [Music] welcome to fruity knitting i'm andrea andrew is here with me in the room but it's just not on view right now because this isn't a normal episode it's it's a update on andrew's health condition so if you're new to our channel fruity knitting is a 90-minute program bringing you knitting inspiration from around the world as well as extra snippets of travel and history and storytelling that we always hope adds some joy to your life and brings a smile to your face so we now have a really great archive of around 110 episodes that are filled with knitting inspiration and tutorials and really great informative interviews with fantastic guests from the knitting world if you'd like a suggestion of what to watch now take a look at episode 93 and that covers the vogue knitting live new york experience for 2020 so that was a four day festival that we went and covered in january around this time last year and that episode includes a little collage of andrew and my own experiences of new york and the festival as well as a mini interview with the editor-in-chief of vogue knitting carla scott there's lots of footage of the fashion shows and the marketplace and also a series of fun vendor interviews so that's a really full vibrant episode for you to look at to look at if you'd like a suggestion so as our regular viewers know andrew was diagnosed with a brain tumor in october last year and this has been the most challenging experience that our little family has had to go through but we have had tremendous support from our very faithful patrons who were incredibly grateful for as well as also great support from fellow colleagues in the knitting world so knitwear designers and and other producers so once again we just want to say thank you so much and we are deeply deeply grateful for the support that's been showing us now we gave our latest upd update on andrew's condition in our last proper episode number 110 which we released on christmas eve last year since then things became a lot more difficult andrew's symptoms grew progressively worse which was really traumatic for me because some of the symptoms are potentially really life-threatening uh so that that's been very very difficult as you can see this is not a normal situation where it's not a normal picture we're not sitting at home on our living room couch i have got a little bit of fruit here and some fake flowers to make it look not so sterile because i have actually brought him down to a specialized cancer clinic in the south of germany in bavaria it's called the hal vang clinic in bavaria so and we're really hoping that here he will have a much better chance because they're able to give him a much more sophisticated and individualistic treatment so i know that we've got a lot of health care workers and and medical professionals amongst our viewers so i'm going to give you a bit of a description but i'm sure my explanation is not going to be exactly accurate so just forgive me and let it go if it's not so it seems that the german health laws here are a lot more flexible compared to other countries as to how oncologists are allowed to treat their patients particularly in private clinics so for example this clinic here has sent for andrews biopsy tissue and they're going to do more tests on it so above and beyond what was done at the university clinics and they're looking for extra gene mutations and depending on what they find they will have the freedom and the access to immunotherapy drugs to use on andrew that normally he may not have access to unless he were to qualify for a certain drug trial and the criteria for qualifying for these drug trials is not just whether that drug could potentially help the patient it's also depends on the patient's age and their treatment history and that's because primarily these drug trials are there to set up as scientific experiments and they need to keep their data really clean that's what they first of all need to do so that these drug trials which take years um can be approved for standard care and can get covering by insurance companies so this clinic if depending on what they find are will have access to any immunotherapy drug that's that has shown to be effective against any gene mutation that they find in andrew's biopsy tissue they will also have the freedom to use any other cancer drug that may not be approved for use on brain tumors but is known or has been shown to be effective on a certain gene mutation so they'll they'll have access to that as well they're also interested in using and able to use off-label drugs that can be helpful so for example off-label drugs are drugs that have often been on the market for decades they're very well known medically as to how they interact with other drugs but also on different health conditions and they've often got very low toxicity their primary use is something outside of cancer so their primary use could be for diabetes or for heart disease but they are known to also have very strong anti-cancer effects so the clinic here is free to develop their own or put together their own cocktail of drugs that could be uniquely effective for andrew's condition because not uh every his his condition is his latest diagnosis is a diffuse midline glioma grade four and that's a very serious um diagnosis but not every diffuse midline glioma grade 4 has the same mutations so they can really put an individual cocktail of drugs or protocol together for andrew and they're free to change the quantities the the amounts or or just to move it around to really fit andrew they're also interested in using and integrating natural therapies as well to try to keep his toxicity levels as low as possible and just to help boost up his immune system and for that i'm really really happy so we're really hoping uh that he has and i think he does have a much better chance of survival here than he would have otherwise um for his diagnosis so i made the decision to bring him here on my own and very quickly in the end so since we originally heard about his diagnosis i've literally done hundreds of hours of extra research because we knew that standard care was never going to cure it would only sort of give him a few extra months so i knew that for him to survive and recover he would have to have access to things that are sort of surrounding the standard care and we hope that he'll be able to do that here so as i said i made the decision to bring him here very fast and on my own andrew was too out of it to object which was great because it is very expensive here and he would have objected so i'm really glad that i just didn't have to battle that with him so he didn't know about it till i'd organized it booked it packed everything up and it was time to bundle him together and put him in the car to drive him down here so it's it is it's amazing to see that despite what avalanche or storm or hurricane life throws at you there are always a few silver linings that you can find and one of the silver linings that we've had is that this clinic normally has a lot of international patients but because of the coronavirus they were able to give andrew a bed at extremely short notice so inside from the time that i booked him at the clinic to getting him here it was inside of 24 hours which was fantastic and another silver lining was that i really wanted to get him here on the friday and not have to wait for a full weekend without doctors being able to really look at him critically but that friday was a snowstorm but again because of the corona virus there was very little traffic on the road and i was able to drive him down here safely and that was fantastic because i'm not a confident driver i actually left home really early so i didn't learn to drive until pretty late until i was pregnant with madeleine at 28 and then i drove for about a year in australia then we moved over here to germany and we lived in the middle of frankfurt so we didn't the public transport here is fantastic and we just didn't need to have a car so for 12 years i didn't drive and then i started driving again it's on the other side of the road so i have been driving for the last seven years but every time that we go on a long trip i always ask andrew to drive so that i can knit so i'm really not confident but the silver lining as i said was there wasn't many trap much traffic on the road so that was fantastic so now that we are here it was i'm so glad i did bring him down on the friday as well because the doctors picked up on two critical things that had been overlooked so i'm i'm very relieved about that and andrew's really relieved as well and he's incredibly happy here so he's he's glad that i've made that decision and that's really good there is also a third silver lining that i want to tell you about and that is we are in the most beautiful location we're in the middle of the black forest and there's been a ton of snow so it just looks like the most magical um winter wonderland and the black forest has got all these very tall dark conifers and their branches are covered with this you know very thick white snow it's incredibly enchanting and exotic i'll never get over it as an australian just seeing this very mid-winter scenery so i'm just able to walk out of the clinic and go for an hour's walk um every day which has been the best type of of um solace and therapy for me it's a much more beautiful place here than where we're living at offenbach that's really not a an attractive area at all so this is just a blessing for me to have that kind of um taking a walk in beautiful landscape is the best kind of therapy for me so i'm incredibly grateful for that i actually wish that i'd brought down the drone because i'd be able to get some stunning footage to show you although i'm only ever used to train with andrew standing next to me so that he can take over for technical emergencies but i did take some footage on my phone so not a proper camera but just on my phone and i've put two minutes of it together with some music for you to enjoy so that's coming up right now because i just want you to see how gorgeous the black forest is right now and i'll see you on the other side [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] welcome back i hope you really enjoyed that scenery it's another stunning day today today the sky is really blue bright blue and all of the snow is just glistening in the sunlight it's it's a dream to look at now unfortunately we do need to ask for your help again this diagnosis of a diffuse midline glioma stage 4 is incredibly serious and the standard with the standard care protocol he's not meant to survive at the best they'll just extend his life for a few months we've spoken to quite a few specialists and they're very decent but they're very direct about what they expect and we really feel that andrew's chance of survival and recovery is best at this clinic where they can give him this really individualized treatment so when we announced andrew's brain tumor back in october our patrons just were incredible they many of them double their pledges some of them also gave a one-off donation towards the medical expenses um that we set up on the the paypal account that we set set up and that they just went above and beyond generosity which was amazing and because of that money and together with our savings i was able to pay a a big percentage of his treatment costs which was wonderful and you have to do that up front anyway to get into a private clinic and so that enabled it us to be able to do this which was such a blessing and we're incredibly grateful for but um we could easily be up by the end of his treatment we could easily need a further 100 000 euros to cover his treatment and i know that this sounds very expensive but it is amazing how much cancer therapy costs if you look into it the brain tumor foundation estimates that the the cost of treating a glioblastoma which is a fourth grade brain tumor is around 450 000 euros thank god that's not what they're talking about here for andrew's costs but it is extraordinary and we are very blessed to actually have an audience that we can reach out to and ask for help for many individuals can't do that but nevertheless i am taking this opportunity to reach out to people we don't want to be asking our patrons to be donating more money and being more generous than what they already have because they've really gone above and beyond generosity there is a ton of power and possibility in a lot of people doing something small and when i look at the views that our last few episodes have got our for example episode 108 i think is 89 000 views episode 89 109 has i think around 80 000 views and episode 110 i think is coming up to 70 000 views now our patrons are a very very small single digit percentage of our viewers and if even half of our viewers those you know 80 000 viewers donated five dollars just once off five dollars we would easily cover the costs for andrew's treatment so that he could stay here at the clinic and get this treatment and that would be a miracle that would just be wonderful so we're asking you even if you've only watched one episode but you that you wanted to check out because you were really interested in one of the guests that i had on and you wanted to learn more about them we're just asking you please can you consider donating five dollars so that we can cover andrew's healthcare costs and he has a chance of recovery and risk and survival by being able to stay here and get this treatment so i really uh we are very privileged to have an audience like i said to be able to reach out to many individuals just don't even have this possibility but nevertheless i am really taking opportunity of this and reaching out to you all and asking this and if you would like to do so you can do a one-off donation via our paypal account which is paypal dot me forward slash fruity knitting all of that money will not be taxed it'll go straight to andrew's medical expenses and you can just write for andrew's medical expenses there and we would be incredibly grateful for this opportunity that you would allow for andrew to have a chance of recovery and survival so yes i can only just ask you please do this and we will be very very grateful and on top of that an extra thanks to our patrons because your care and your support is just like i said above generosity thank you for supporting us even though we are unable to put out the content that we used to i have had a bit of a backlog of extras um interviews and things that i have sort of in an archive ready to to be to spend time on editing and bring out to you but i can only do that when it's at all possible so i'm staying here at the clinic at the moment andrew is incredibly weak he's unable to do anything himself really i help him feed and bathe and dress and and he's a lot of vomiting going on and i'm here there with him all the time and throughout the night and the nurses here are just wonderful they're very kind very positive but i'm here immediately when there's a problem and at the moment from a practical and an emotional standpoint andrew really doesn't feel like he could go through it without me being here and i don't want to be three hours away from him at least while he's very critical so it does cost a bit more me being here but it's a huge help for andrew so we do want to end on a positive note and we want to say that despite this most serious diagnosis andrew and i definitely have not given up we are standing firm in belief for a complete and full recovery and we are really grateful for your comments to stay positive and upbeat and encouraging and we would love it if you could all really stand in positive expectation with us for a full and complete recovery for andrew so thank you okay i've pulled myself together now i'm gonna spruce andrew up a little bit i'm going to put a shirt on him brush his hair he's going to prop up in bed and we'll just say quick hike because i know many of you would just love to see him quickly so folks hi here i am i'm just really trying to hold out each day get through each day one at a time and sometimes we break into a smaller segments that i have to get through um andrea is just the savior here like she said i am glad that she got us down here um i think we need it to have a chance here yeah yeah it is really hard and i'm just so grateful for andrea's support i can't say that strongly enough he's looking pretty good i've just given him a haircut tried to clean me up giving him a shave and a haircut but i think i did a pretty good job on his hair [Laughter] so we're learning lots of new skills there hasn't been a lot of knitting being done but i actually took over one of madeleine's projects because because of the lockdown i don't have a project and i was expecting some yarn but it just hasn't come so out of necessity i've i've been working on madeleine's jumper you might remember she wasn't too happy about me taking over a project but i just needed one for sanity's sake so i've been working on her what i call the easter bunny jumper because it's so white and fluffy that's the rowan brushed fleece so that's nearly finished and then i think after that if my wall doesn't arrive i'll i'll take over andrew's lace you don't mind no i can't object [Laughter] okay well take care everybody and thank you very much for spending time with us bye mmm [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hmm foreign [Music] you [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Fruity Knitting

Views: 118,694

Keywords: Knitting

Id: yST3qnqEPyc

Length: 29min 5sec (1745 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021