When BBC science presenter George McGavin was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma in July 2018, he decided to make a documentary
In A Year to Save My Life: George McGavin and Melanoma, zoologist and broadcaster George talks of the time he was diagnosed with a deadly melanoma, in July 2018. "Three o’clock in the morning, when you can’t sleep, is the very worst time to start Googling," says George, 65.
"I had a small dark spot that looked like a bruise on the underside of my heel," he told TV Times.
"When I whipped off my shoe and sock for a skin specialist, I knew immediately it wasn’t good.
"Within two weeks I had a big hole in my heel where it had been hacked out. Biopsies on my groin nodes and PET scans revealed it had spread and was now a Stage 3 cancer."
Around this time, a new drug treatment became available on the NHS. In this film he sets out to discover more about his cancer and the pioneering treatment.
"The cancer I’ve got is due to a single, tiny mutation in one gene in one cell in my heel. There are now drugs available that target this gene.
"I interviewed [2018 Nobel Prize winner] Jim Allison, who discovered cancerous cells basically fool our immune system into not killing them. Now there are several immunotherapy drugs that can do miraculous things."
It's an interesting, informative and, above all, hopeful programme. And as George says, "If you get cancer, it’s not necessarily the end of the world. There’s an army of individuals out there doing amazing research."
TV Times rating: ****
