Hi my name is Nadine and I have started this page for the beautiful 17 year old Caitlyn Carstein,

Caitlyn is in the fight of her life against a very aggressive form of cancer, neuroblastoma. 

One in two children diagnosed with this form of cancer sadly do not win their battle.

Caitlyn has been fighting for nine months now, she has been through many rounds of brutal high dose chemotherapy, two failed attempts before finally having success at harvesting her stem cells a process needed for Caitlyn to be able to move to the next stage of her treatment.

Caitlyn has had more high does chemotherapy, and her stem cells replaced which has been a more painful process than the chemotherapy. Caitlyn also went through a surgery on her primary tumour in her abdomen that took over 12 hours, unfortunately the surgeons were only able to remove less than 70% of the tumour as it is an extremely invasive tumour and is wrapped around too many important vessels.

It has been a hard road for young Caitlyn and she still faces up to twenty rounds of radiation and more surgery. 

While being aware of the sobering odds of 1 in 2 children making it through to recovery.

My aim is for us as a community to come together and relieve some of the financial pressure on Caitlyn and her family so they can concentrate on her fight and being by her side where she needs them. 

For the past nine months instead of hanging out with her friends and being with her family like other 17 year olds Caitlyn spends all of her time in hospital and in treatments at Monash hospital and the Royal Children’s a hospital. 

Caitlyn’s amazing family have rallied around her in these hard and uncertain times, her mum Tanya has stopped her job to be with her 24 hours a day as she needs constant help,

her dad Mark tries to go between the rest of the kids and younger brother, works when he can and tries to be in Melbourne with Caitlyn.

It is financially a challenging time for Tanya and Mark on top of the worry for Caitlyn’s health.

We are hoping to raise some money to help Mark and Tanya to at least relieve a little of the pressure so they can put all of their energy into Caitlyn.

If you are able to help, big or small it would be hugely appreciated please donate to Caitlyn’s support fund.

i know times are tough for everyone at the moment and if you can’t donate that’s ok too but if you could please share this page it would really go a long way to help Caitlyn.

It’s times like now that a community can come together and make a huge difference in a family’s life.