Crowd-funding campaign to fight rare cancer
The daughter of a Staffordshire teaching assistant battling a rare form of liver cancer that affects just 1 in 5,000,000 is crowd-funding to help her mum get access to private UK treatment not available on the NHS.
Chloe Avon, 22, has started a fundraising campaign to help pay for immunotherapy treatment costing between £80,000-£100,000 in London for her mother Tracey Adcock.
Tracey 45, a teaching assistant at Redhill Primary School in Cannock, was diagnosed with Fibrolamellar Hepatocellular Carcinoma in 2015 and after initially thinking she had beaten the disease after a liver re-section, she was given the devastating news it had come back and spread across her body.
Tracey has undergone several major surgeries at The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, Walsall Manor Hospital, RJAH Oswestry and New Cross Wolverhampton including two different types of chemotherapy and radiotherapy which have not been successful to date.
She has also undergone Oxygen Therapy at the MS Therapy Centre in Wolverhampton.
Daughter Chloe has set up a fundraising campaign called 'Tracey's Hope Fund' on youcaring.com.
In just a few days, donations have reached more than £1,500, with messages of support shared from donors.
Chloe said: "The only thing she has left to access is immunotherapy treatment which is not yet available on the NHS for Tracey's type of cancer.
"We have been offered drug trials which have not yet been tested on humans however the side effects could be risky at this late stage.
"Since my mother's diagnosis she has completely changed her diet to be as natural as possible and spent hours upon hours researching ways to stop tumor growth. "
Immunotherapy, also called biologic therapy, is a type of cancer treatment designed to boost the body's natural defenses to fight the cancer.
It uses substances either made by the body or in a laboratory to improve or restore immune system function.
Tracey has also created a blog to help other sufferers understand cancer and the research which is out there.
Tracey's blog says: "If the research exists, but it is not passed on, then people aren’t really dying of cancer – they are dying of ignorance and that's scandalous"
To read the blog, visit facebook.com/TraceysBlogpost/
To find out how you can help the family visit: https://www.youcaring.com/traceysusan-792253