Hi my name is Jodie, I’m fundraising for my daughter Leia. Leia is 4 years old, and has been diagnosed with stage 3 neuroblastoma.

Our goal for this page is for help and support our daughter and our family to get her through this difficult time. This is to help us as a family stay closer together and take the financial struggles of staying in hospitals for weeks at a time and the travel costs to get leia to her hospital appointments and to help her have fun days out to take her away from hospital and to be a normal kid in between hospital stays.

We are preparing to go for intensive chemotherapy treatment which means leia with have to stay in hospital for 4/5 weeks as she’ll become very unwell and need a stem cell transfusion to help her recover.

Leia’s Journey so far:

Leia first had signs something wasn’t right in July 2023. We took her to the doctors with abdominal pains and a high temperature. They sent her to Lancaster hospital with suspected appendicitis. But as it was at night she was transported to Manchester where she had multiple scans which then showed leia had a large mass on/above her right kidney. Leia then went to have a biopsy of the tumour to find out what it was. This biopsy failed but it was decided it was cancerous and treated as a wilms. Her treatment started immediately but wasn’t being responsive. She then went to have more scans, her doctors thought that actually it wasn’t growing to look like wilms and wanted to to repeat a biopsy which finally came back with a answer but not the one we was expecting.

Leia was diagnosed with stage 3 neuroblastoma in October. Leia was put in stage 3 as she is older then the average child that gets this cancer. Leia was started on a different chemotherapy to hopefully shrink it. Leias had continuous scans and procedures during this time.

Leia was affected by all this and wasn’t able to continue nursery and I had to leave my job whilst being 4 months pregnant which was very hard . She became very isolated as her treatment made her very vulnerable to infections. Leia has missed out on a lot of normal 3/4 year old experiences but has stayed the most strongest and happiest girl throughout.

Leia has had her major surgery in march 2024 to remove her tumour and her right kidney. The surgery went as successful as it could have done but not all of it was able to be removed.

Leias doctors have decided that the best thing for her is to go on to have more chemotherapy to try get rid of the last bit of the tumour. But this is very intensive and will make leia very ill. Her future treatment will be radiotherapy and immune therapy.

This will put a big impact on our family as we are unable to stay together. Me and my 5 month old will be staying in hospital with leia for the whole time she need to stay in whilst my partner will be at work. There is just no possibility he will be able to be with us. We don’t know what to expect from the next coming months in her treatment but will be thankful for any donations to get leia and our family through this hard time together.

Thank you for reading!