Alice Xenia Dooley has been the beating heart of my friendship group since the year 2000. I met her aged 18 when studying in Cardiff and since the moment she stepped into my life wearing zebra print ankle boots I’ve adored her. We’ve laughed until we’ve cried, lived our dreams and held each other tight when we’ve needed to - sadly now is one of those moments.

Eleven years ago Alice made a bold decision to change her life course by packing a bag and moving to Spain to work as a teacher. Her pre brexit departure meant that she has had the ability to remain and continue with the life she’s built.

In June last year one of our best friends got married in Loch Lomond and sure enough Alice made the mad dash back to the UK on a Friday night to be there. We gave her a blow dry, popped her in a frock and celebrated the day. When Monday came I was looking back at the pictures and noticed something different about Alice’s face, her smile was off and she had an unusual squint. We didn’t think too much about it and figured she was probably tired from 36 hours in Scotland.

We caught up over the coming weeks and she shared that she’d developed “Bell’s palsy” and sadly her face had dropped further. I went straight to Dr Google and learnt all about the condition and the prognosis. It’s an unfortunate thing - an often transient paralysis of the nerve supplying the facial muscles. There are limited treatment options but most often it resolves after a few months.

However, 18 months on and several trips to the doctor later - it had reached the point where she’d lost all feeling on one side of her face and was having to tape her eye closed as she no longer had the ability to blink and she was at risk of losing her eye sight if her eye dried out. This didn’t feel right so on a trip back to London, and at great expense, she paid for an MRI scan to get a second opinion. Sadly, a benign tumour was discovered growing behind Alice’s ear. As it had grown it had started to involve the facial nerve and was the reason her condition was not improving. Because the diagnosis came so late it was unlikely the feeling or movement in her face would return.

The new diagnosis was an extremely rare condition called facial nerve Schwannoma. Following specialist assessment she has been given an opportunity to have two operations, one to remove the tumour so it doesn’t continue to grow eventually causing the loss of her hearing as well as permanent facial paralysis; and the second to replace the nerves in her face using nerves from her leg so the feeling and movement in her face could return to some extent.

This all sounded pretty terrifying but at least she knew what she was dealing with now.

Unfortunately because Alice had not been living in the UK for 11 years, she is unable to have the operation on the NHS and because of the rarity of the condition the operation is not available in Spain. Her only option is to have it done privately in the UK at a cost of £50,000.00 Whilst her family and friends have all clubbed together, she is still falling short of where she needs to be for the second operation.

Alice is a pretty private person and she’s taken a huge amount of encouragement to consider crowd funding but the options are limited. On behalf of Alice and all who love her, I appeal to you all to see if you might be able to help a dear friend in need. Thank you for considering.