Sophie is a gorgeous, inspiring little girl. It is devastating to know that she has been affected by such an aggressive killer disease at such a young age. We've decided to finally do a trek that I've been putting off for sometime - the 3 peak challenge. I'm going to do the challenge in 24 hours. That's the three mountains at a walking pace that could add up to 13 hours, plus your 11 hour drive, and you're right on the limit of your 24 hour challenge time! And that's what we're hoping we'll reach with our fundraising - a basecamp for Sophie to spring board her to survival.

The team consists of: two drivers - Brian Blackburn and John Dillon and three trekkers - Jason Dillon, Ben Jones and Alex Mardan.  

All the money goes to the charity. We're paying for and organising the entire journey, from the 'Big Foot' net to the constipation pills. We're aware my target of £500 might be quite high but if we pull together we can climb this mountain.

She was just 15 months old at diagnosis. Her cancer had spread to her bone marrow and liver making her stage 4 cancer "high risk" the worst case scenario for this disease. Neuroblastoma is a rare and aggressive malignant cancer with horrendous survival rates as low as 20%. Relapse is very common which is reflected in the survival rate. If relapse does occur there is no cure at the moment in Europe.
After extensively searching through the current treatments available, an option for Sophie would be to have a monoclonal antibody known as 3f8 hopefully if available at the same time as she has her Accutane (oral chemotherapy). Combined, this treatment gives Sophie a staggering 80-90% of survival.

The huge downside of this is that the only place in the world that offers this treatment is a hospital in New York called Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. The cost for this treatment alone can be in excess of $500,000. Another option would be if (god forbid) Sophie ever did relapse, knowing there is currently no cure in Europe for relapse, the only effective treatment available in the world to cure is at the same Hospital (Memorial Sloan Kettering), again the cost of this treatment is going cost around $500,000.
Fewer than 100 children are diagnosed with neuroblastoma in the UK each year. Most children who get this cancer are younger than five years old. Neuroblastoma is the second most common solid tumour in childhood and makes up 8% of the total number of children's cancers.

 

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