Damian Kirk is fundraising to help extend Lee Hancock’s Life

Can you help extend Lee’s life as we try to find a cure for chemo-resistant cancer?

Who is Lee?

Lee is the brother-in-law of our close family friends. Lee has stage 4 Bowel Cancer and has shown to have a mutation called BRAF V600E. This means that the tumours become resistant to Chemotherapy. He was diagnosed in 2017. After 3 long years of battling with surgery, treatment and desperately fundraising, he and his wife, Cara, were given a glimmer of hope and he began a drugs trial in September 2020.

However, in January 2021 their world tragically fell apart once more. They received the devastating news that Lee’s cancer had now spread to his brain. With this he lost his chance to join any clinical trial until this situation is managed. It was hoped Lee would stay on this for a good year to enable the research project to come up with further findings that could help Lee and many others.

Why I want to help

When I heard the news from Cara on the 5th February and I felt just devastated for them both. On top of everything Lee and Cara are going through, they have to fund travel, accommodation and specialist medicines that Lee can’t get on the NHS, plus many private hospital visits – it really got to me. I broke down reading this, thinking how I would be if it was my lovely wife, Lynn, in this situation. It’s an unbearable thought. Lee’s story has touched my heart and I dearly want to help them have more time together and support this important research for Lee and many others. So I’m doing something about it.

The Challenge

I have decided to try and raise over £5,000 to help Lee and Cara reach a total target of £50,000 to support Lee’s life-extending needs.

I have decided to run, walk and spin my way to over 250km per month for two months and wait for it...I will also stop drinking alcohol for this entire period.

I have never undertaken such a huge sporting challenge and certainly never gone longer than a week without a drink in many, many years. So will be a significant challenge for me personally – one which I am committed to in the hope of helping Lee and Cara.

Why I chose this challenge

Anyone who knows me will know I am an all or nothing person. I have great passion, energy and positivity. Few people will know I also have times when it’s not easy to maintain this and I struggle to motivate myself to exercise and perhaps rely on unhealthy ways to relieve life’s stresses and darker days, such as alcohol. I am aware of who I am and aware that with the right focus and challenge I can channel my positive energy to help others and in a way that is good for my mental health too. People who know me and work with me will hear me speaking much more openly and honestly about mental health. This challenge is for Lee, it is for me and it is for anyone who wants to turn dark times into days which are a little bit brighter.

How can you help?

DONATE: I want your money, plain and simple – let’s be clear about that! I want us to raise as much money as we can to extend Lee’s life, to get him fit enough again to get back on the trial and to hopefully find a cure to chemo-resistant cancer for Lee and many others like him.

GET INVOLVED, SHARE, SUPPORT: Join me - either a real/virtual run, walk or spin. I will be video podcasting across all channels so get used to seeing me for the next two months. Please share Lee’s story and my challenge to really gain momentum for this.

I am so grateful that you have taken the time to read this and for any and all of your support. It’s not hard to recognise the size of this challenge and the devastating heartache Lee and Cara are dealing with every single day. Let us take that financial burden away as one big global family. Thank you so much.

A few words from Lee and Cara

Lee’s Cancer and has shown to have a mutation called BRAF V600E. This means that the tumours become resistant to Chemotherapy and other treatments. 15-20% people diagnosed with Bowel Cancer, Skin Cancer, Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer & Hairy Cell Leukaemia will have this mutation. Meaning thousands of people like Lee will die from this disease. With further testing and understanding there could be a cure for this type of cancer.

To extend Lee’s life, and therefore others, we have been given the opportunity to access a method called CRISPR which traces faults in the genes. When these faults are found they can be switched off using targeted treatment to effectively kill off the cancer cells. You can find out about the project here BRAF V600E Research.

We have become quite a centre for other people that have been diagnosed with bowel cancer with BRAF V600E. They too find themselves in very difficult situations and we try to help them with the knowledge we have learnt over these years. It is this evolving landscape that is changing how and why we are fundraising. Our intention is to keep helping others and maybe even go as far as setting up a foundation to help people with the BRAF mutation.

So with these things in mind we would like to raise this money for anything related to our cancer work. It is still predominately for helping to keep Lee alive to benefit from our research program, for drugs, consultations, tests and associated costs to access these things but should there be surplus we would like to either help other people with testing, set up the foundation or/and give the money to Birmingham University. We have come so far in setting up the ground-breaking research program that we don't won't to give up and we want to keep Lee on this planet with us as without him it would be unthinkable.

Please help by donating, setting up your own fundraiser or by sharing this page. Anything you can do to help could make a difference between life and death for people like Lee and thousands of others.

Thank you