Help for Jack - Neuroblastoma treatment

Our beautiful boy Jack, he was a healthy, happy 5 year old, running around as normal without a care in the world.

In the middle of January he suddenly started to complain of leg pain and developed a limp. We had 2 visits to the GP, they advised that it was just a viral infection. On Thursday 25th January, Jack seemed much better and he went to school as normal. When picking Jack up from school his teacher told me he had been upset that his leg hurt. Jack was then up all night in pain, I took him to a&e, they did an X-ray of his hips and told me everything was fine and to just give him regular ibuprofen. However, this did not help. After another night of pain and crying, I phoned 111 I was advised to take Jack back to a&e and request blood tests. That afternoon Jack’s results came back and we were told to take him straight to Bristol children’s hospital.

When we arrived they suspected he had septic hip, however the ultrasound didn’t show any fluid on his hip. A couple of days later Jack had an ultrasound of his abdomen. We were soon called in to a private room to speak to a consultant, we were told during the scan they had found a mass sitting above Jack’s right kidney. They said that Jack was presenting well and so it was probably nothing to worry about.

On the 1st February Jack had an MRI scan to look at the mass more clearly. Afterwards we were told the MRI was much more concerning then the ultrasound images. That was the day we were told our son had cancer. More tests needed to be done but because of the placement of the tumour we were told it was most likely Neuroblastoma.

Over the next 2 weeks Jack had many more tests including, biopsies, mibg scan, ct scan, bone marrow aspiration and a Hickman line fitted ready to start treatment.

On the 15th February all the results were in and we were called into hospital to hear the official diagnosis, Stage 4 high risk Neuroblastoma. Our lives changed instantly.

Jack is going to have a very long road ahead, with intense chemotherapy, surgery to try and remove the primary tumour, high dose chemotherapy, stem cell rescue, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

If things go well his NHS treatment will last around a year. Jack currently has a 40-50% chance of survival but is at high risk of relapse, if this happens the chance of survival is just 5%.

We are fundraising for maintenance treatment that is not available in the UK. This treatment lowers the possibility of a relapse occurring and gives Jack a better chance of survival if it did return. This involves multiple trips to America over 2-3 years in which we would need to cover flights, insurance, accommodation and medical bills. Jack needs to complete his NHS treatment and have no evidence of disease, then travel very soon after to begin his treatment in the US.

I'm sure some people will think raising this amount is an impossible task. We ask that you put yourselves in our shoes, if this was your child I'm sure you would also do all you could to save their life. We won’t give up, whatever happens in the future we need to be able to say we did everything we possibly could.

Please help us to give our son the best possible chance of survival. He is only 5 years old and deserves to live a happy, healthy and full life.

If for some reason we couldn't go to America or didn’t raise enough, the funds will go towards Jack’s long term care and we would look to help another child who is fundraising for the same treatment.

Thank you for your support.