Steve Ackroyd's Brain Tumour Treatment.

Dear kind hearted friends family and supporters,

Writing this has been hard since I’m not good at sharing personal news or posting on social media. But since my lovely husband’ Steve’s brain cancer diagnosis, many of you have asked how you can support us, and now is the time for me to swallow my pride, share our story and ask for your help. 

Some of you might be hearing this news for the first time; I’m sorry we haven’t told you sooner. We’ve been fighting and processing what’s been happening.

Last June, Steve started to get seizures, he’d had sleeping issues for a while and some other symptoms, but this felt sudden and out of the blue. After many calls and a lot of waiting, we finally got the results from scans and biopsies, which confirmed our worst fears: Steve had a stage 4 Glioblastoma brain tumour and it was inoperable;

Steve’s only 47. 

Steve then started his cancer treatment, to try to pause the tumour growth, because it's incurable. 

After what feels like endless appointments; 27 rounds of radiotherapy, six months of chemo, so many complications and hospital stays, and Steve losing the use of his left leg from a 4-hour seizure, we got the news that the treatment wasn’t working and the tumour is growing. 

Deflated, defeated, and terrified, we picked ourselves back up and started fighting again. 

Steve’s now on 2nd line chemo, and we’re hopeful it will work, but we cannot wait. We need to act now. UCLH and Queens Square hospital have been amazing, but we’ve hit a dead end. We need to do more. We cannot access all the treatments we need on the NHS or even in the UK. 

Steve will need a variety of treatments to hit it from every angle. This kind of brain tumour is so aggressive you have to throw everything at it. Our aim is to prolong and improve the quality of Steve’s life and potentially stop the tumour in its tracks and give Steve as much additional time with our daughter Autumn as possible.

Unfortunately the treatment costs are eye-watering and as a now full time carer, my options are limited, so we need financial assistance to fund the treatment. We estimate It will cost about 80K. So although this amount feels huge, every contribution towards it matters. 

Despite my constant reassurance Steve is terrified of leaving us in debt.

Your help will let us breathe again.

Thanks for reading.

With love,

Fran x