Please help Charlie! All our futures may depend on it...

I‘ve been very moved this morning reading about the bravery of this young lad and felt compelled to share his story.

Charlie is part of a family that is close to my Brother and sister in law and I’ve just donated towards his Cancer Treatment medical bills, what Charlie needs to save his life is not available on the NHS or even in the UK. His family are literally trying everything they can to save their Son.

For someone so young he has already endured more medical treatment than most of us will face in a lifetime, he is currently in Mexico undergoing leading edge CAR T-Cell treatment for a rare form of cancer, it started as a Medulloblastoma brain tumour in 2013 when Charlie was just 8 and jumped to his spine in 2019, this will be Charlie’s 4th form of life saving treatment, already he has spent more of his childhood with this awful disease in his life than without it.

The family have been through so much yet are still fighting harder than ever to raise the money needed for the continued private treatment Charlie needs to save his life.

My own family in the last 12 months has faced the harrowing journey through cancer treatment as my wife Melissa fought her own battle, Melissa is not out of the woods but her treatment has had a positive effect. I guess the reason I am so moved by Charlie's story is that Melissa and I have had time to grow up, fall in love, argue and make up and have two amazing kids all before cancer came into our lives, we've had time to live, make mistakes and explore the world, Charlie deserves those things too, he’s too young to let cancer beat him, but even with his amazing family's support he can't do it alone, he needs support from a wider community.

If you read this while having your morning cuppa I’ve got one simple ask, please read Charlie’s story on his donation page here, if you can spare a little then donate a few pounds and then please please share with others, in the grand scheme of things the amount they are raising is not a lot, we only need to reach a few hundred people on LinkedIn that are willing to donate a tenner and they’ll be able to pay for the treatment that we are all hoping and praying will eliminate Charlie's cancer.

One final thought I'd like to leave you with is this:

Cutting edge treatment like Charlie's affects all of our futures!

Why?

Well you see, I never thought cancer would affect my family, when it did it was a rare form of Sarcoma that only 65 people a year in the UK are diagnosed with, it changed my view of the world in a heartbeat. When we were told this piece of information my heart sank, I knew we were now on the fringes of cancer treatment. You see the small amount of statistical data on what did and didn't work for previous patients was going to be the deciding factor on whether Melissa survived. The treatment has been effective so far but it was the hundreds of people in the last 20 years that privately funded their treatment programs (many of whom did not survive) before it was made available on the NHS, that proved what worked and who paved the way for Melissa to receive the help she needed. I will be eternally grateful for every donation that went into funding those treatments.

Now I see rare forms of cancer treatment such as Charlie's not only as an opportunity to save one life but as an investment in all our futures, I donate because I want the cutting edge cancer treatments of today to be the freely available and 99% successful when my Grand Children's generation are fighting their own battles with Cancer. So you see, if we all invest a little in donating to treatment today our children's children will be spared the pain of losing their loved ones in future?

Food for thought isn't it.....? Good deeds really do circle back to help us all.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, much love to you and your loved ones in these strange times we live in, stay safe and well xx

Donate for Charlie here: https://www.facebook.com/donate/339388953688126/

Steve