Support Our Family & Help Chester Beat His Rare Leukaemia

Hi everyone. My name is Laura and I have started this Fundraiser to help support our family and my 4-year-old son Chester through this incredibly tough time, which is Chester being diagnosed with a rare type of Leukaemia (Philadelphia positive ALL). His PH+ ALL diagnosis is rare in children and is more aggressive/harder to treat, meaning more intensive treatment and chemo for a minimum of 2 years!

In the last few weeks, our lives have been turned upside down and we are asking for your help and support to get my family and son Chester through this devasting time.

After weeks of being ill and poorly, having episodes of spiking temperatures, and not being able to walk or move his arms, we finally got a diagnosis of Chester having the thing all parents would dread to hear, and that is Cancer.

He hadn't been himself and just wasn't right for weeks, but unfortunately, we were not being listened to and not getting a diagnosis at all and just told he was a medical mystery and that his bloods were not normal, but no clue what was wrong.

Luckily we were persistent and we saw the right consultant at the right hospital and we finally got a diagnosis, although it wasn't one we wanted to hear. It was also the last thing that crossed our minds as Cancer didn't even occur to us and we thought Chester had some sort of weird virus or infection.

When he was diagnosed he wasn't his usual bubbly chatty self, and didn't even want to play with any of his toys and it felt like our Chester wasn't there. But he has now started his chemotherapy and treatment and is already more himself.

We were on a roll and he was coming back as all Low Risk with his ALL diagnosis. But then we got the devasting news that he had B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), but with the rare Philadelphia Positive chromosome. Our hearts couldn't sink any lower.

Not only did we have this heartbreaking news, but everything else decided to also go wrong this year. Me and my fiance Christian (Chester's dad) are self-employed bloggers/YouTubers and also sell software that Christian has developed. After the release of AI and Google Algorithm changes, and the cost of living crisis, our self-employment revenue went rapidly downhill.

Christian then got a job to overcome this, but after accepting a job offer in IT we got the diagnosis a couple of weeks later, and they withdrew his offer of employment.

I am also heavily pregnant (currently due in 4 weeks) and we also have another 15-month-old at home called Willow.

So to cut a long story short, we have been greatly affected by the cost of living crisis, Christian is having to be Chester's full-time carer due to me being so pregnant, and I can't also touch the chemo drugs that Chester is taking, and have to be careful not to touch his bodily fluids to protect the baby.

Our bills in the UK are constantly going up, including food, petrol, mortgage, and other household bills, while our income is going down. So we are now struggling to pay for all of this. We have done many trips and also have to drive a lot to our treatment center for Chester which is a 60-mile round trip each time. It is costing us a fortune in fuel and the parking charges are ridiculous, and we just cannot afford it.

So we are asking for any help and support you can give to help us through this. To help our family (myself, Christian, Willow, Chester, and baby) with our bills, food and hospital costs, medical costs, and supplies, and to make it easier to support Chester through his rough, intensive, and grueling treatment without having the other stresses on top.

It doesn't matter how small, we appreciate any help and thank you for taking the time to read our story.

You can follow along Chester's journey on our blog here: https://chestersjourney.com/