The parents of a little girl have shared their heartbreak after the toddler’s strange symptoms turned out to be warning signs of stage four cancer – leaving them to fundraise £250,000 to save her life.
Little Ava Bolton, three, had bruising around her eyes and started walking with a limp around her third birthday and Christmas time, before becoming sickly, pale and lethargic.
Her parents, Scott and Natalie, both 34, initially thought it was a virus, but when her symptoms did not clear, they got her an emergency GP appointment, and were referred to their local hospital in mid-January.
The toddler, from Mauchline, Scotland, underwent blood tests and a bone marrow sample, which found cancerous cells – horrifying her parents.
Further tests in the weeks that followed confirmed their worst fears: their daughter had high risk, stage four neuroblastoma which had spread throughout her body.
“We were utterly devastated – it wasn’t something we could have ever imagined,” Natalie, a primary care nurse, told http://NeedToKnow.co.uk .
“We researched neuroblastoma and the statistics made us feel worse, knowing that Ava had only a 40-50% chance of survival.
“After all the horrific treatment she will have to endure, there is still a greater than 60% chance that it will return, which will reduce her chance of survival to 5%.”
To combat this, the family are fundraising £250,000 to send their daughter to New York for a new treatment to stop neuroblastoma from returning.
Before her diagnosis, her family say Ava was “very active”, only ever experienced coughs and colds, and was a healthy little girl.
Ava immediately started chemotherapy and a trial treatment, as well as having daily injections to boost bone marrow production, and regular blood transfusions.
After three rounds of chemotherapy, she underwent a stem cell harvest, and is now set to move onto a higher dose of chemo from June to August.
Natalie said: “This will wipe out her full immune system and she will be very susceptible to infections which could become life threatening.
“Ava will remain in an isolation room for six weeks in hospital until her body has recovered.”
Once she has recovered from chemo, the next step will be for her to have targeted radiotherapy, and the final stage of treatment will be immunotherapy, which will last for six months.
Despite all that the plucky tot has been through, Ava has been “extremely resilient”.
Natalie said: “She takes it all in her stride.
“She has made us very proud of how she is coping with everything.
“She’s always had a smile on her face and is a little chatterbox – keeping all of the staff amused with her antics.
“But she does miss being at home spending time with her brother, Lucas, five, and her nursery friends.”
Thankfully, Ava’s most recent scans have been positive, showing a reduction in the cancer cells and “moving in the right direction” to rid her of the disease.
However, given her high chance of relapsing in the future, her family are now raising money to send her to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York for a new vaccination treatment which aims to stop neuroblastoma from returning.
It is not currently available in the UK, but the family have raised £107,000 to date – nearly half of their £250,000 target, and have thanked donors for their “overwhelming support”.
Natalie said: “We are hopeful that we will reach our target – we are almost halfway after only two months and have had an amazing response from our local community.
“We have spoken with various families who have been through or are currently going through the treatment from MSK in New York with great results so far which gives us hope and confidence in the treatment.
“Without this treatment, Ava is more likely to relapse reducing her chances of survival – this is something we are not willing to take a chance on.”
Ava’s fundraising page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-fund-avas-stage-4-neuroblastoma-treatment
