Such innocuous beginnings: a sore throat that doesn’t go away. A thing on your hand that doesn’t hurt but begins to spread up your wrist. Changes in your toilet habits. And you find yourself with cancer. If you are both very unlucky and very lucky, you may go on to find yourself at the Royal Marsden hospital, under the care of one of the doctors there, who lead the world in providing innovative approaches to hard-to-treat cancers. “We understand that this is their only hope,” says one. “We have to push the limits of what is surgically possible.” Without intervention, most of the patients who arrive there will die within three months.
The first episode of the trio that comprise Channel 4’s new documentary series Super Surgeons: A Chance at Life follows three patients and their doctors. When 41-year-old Jade took her baby to a routine GP appointment, she mentioned that she had had a sore throat for five weeks. The GP sent her for investigation and Jade was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. She has had chemotherapy and radiotherapy but the cancer is now back, deep in her throat, behind her larynx. The standard treatment is a laryngectomy but Jade does not want to lose her voice. Her surgeon, Prof Vin Paleri, is going to try to remove just the tumour by going in through her mouth using robotic tools he can manipulate from outside. Once there, he finds he has to change his plans to something that has not been done before.
