Charlotte elizabeth Savill

Fibrolamellar liver cancer is a very rare and random form of cancer that generally attacks children between the ages of 13 and 25. You have a one in five million chance of getting it. My beautiful daughter, Charlotte, aged 22, did. After three six-hour operations in Florida and Boston to remove countless tumours in her abdomen and chest, one as large as 10lbs, we travelled across the Atlantic 23 times in six months trying to find a cure. Immunotherapy and chemotherapy were both tried but there is no cure. After a lot of pain and suffering, Charlotte passed away on August 24th in St.Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin after a 16 month battle with the disease..

Because fibrolamellar is so rare, the pharmaceutical companies are not interested in investing in the research necessary to find a cure. Sandy Simon, a biophysicist at the Rockefeller University in New York, who is the leading authority on fibrolamellar in the world, has spent his life since 2008, when his daughter was diagnose with the disease, trying to find a cure. He is getting closer but is badly underfunded.

No parent should have to go through losing a child as I have just done and the sooner Sandy can find a cure, the sooner there will be less pain in the world. Please give generously and stop the heartache so many parents and siblings will otherwise have to experience.