‘In July 2021 Jude started to complain of pains in his legs, was struggling walking, spiking temperatures and having night sweats. After a few trips to A&E and a few simple diagnoses Jude was admitted to Sheffield Children’s Hospital for further investigations. The evening before his third birthday we were told that a tumour had been found on his MRI. It completely shattered our worlds. We were quickly thrown into a new world of cancer, it had a whole new language and rules. Jude was officially diagnosed a few days later with High Risk Neuroblastoma meaning the cancer had already spread. Neuroblastoma is a rare and aggressive childhood cancer that affects around 100 children each year in the UK. Children diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma have about a 40-50% chance of long-term survival. It has one of the lowest survival rates of any childhood cancer and the causes are not known.  

Since his diagnosis Jude has endured 90 days and 58 nights in hospital, including 2 in High Dependency, he’s had 21 days of having chemotherapy drugs infused, including COJEC treatment and high dose chemotherapy. Since his diagnosis he has had 16 scans, 21 covid swabs, 66 injections into his thigh given by a nurse or mum, he’s had 9 anaesthetics, 7 surgeries or procedures including a removal of his primary tumour, he’s had a stem cell transplant, 10 blood transfusions, 7 platelet transfusions, started wearing hearing aids due to chemo induced hearing loss. He spent part of his third birthday and the whole of Christmas 2021 in hospital. He is about to start radiotherapy in February and will then go onto immunotherapy. This is where his NHS treatment ends but Jude will still be left with a high chance of relapse, something that as a family we have researched any trials available to try to avoid this happening. He’s barely started his life before cancer has tried to snatch it away from him, we do not want him to go through this again. 40-50% of children diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma will not respond completely to standard treatment, or the cancer will come back. If a child does relapse with neuroblastoma, their chances of long-term survival are less than 10%.

Jude loves dinosaurs and animals. He has a thirst for knowledge about how things work. He loves Elton John and even received a Christmas card, present and video message from him! He has warmed rhe hearts of so many with his smile and attitude towards everything that he has, and still is, going through. He has received videos from Andy Day, Monty Don and Ed Sheeran! His story helped us and those close to him raise over £13,000 last year for the ward refurbishment at the hospital and PACT, a charity that work with families affected by childhood cancer. We have also managed to encourage a lot of people to start/restart donating blood or platelets by highlighting the importance of those for people affected by cancer.

We are investigating two trails, with the help of Jude oncology team, which are available in America. Both options aim to eliminate the risk of the neuroblastoma returning. These treatments would need to be entirely privately funded as they are not available through the NHS. We are still filtering through all the data that is available, and completely mind boggling, to decide which option would work best for Jude. The price of the treatments are huge and this is why we need to start our fundraising as soon as possible.

Any funds received in excess of what we need for the treatment will be donated to a charity which funds research into Neuroblastoma.

You can find information about our journey so far and keep up to date on Instagram @lucymellonjameson

You can find information about our journey so far and keep up to date on Instagram @lucymellonjameson .