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At the age of 15 months Sophie was diagnosed with a highly malignant cancer called neuroblastoma. She has the highest stage, stage 4 (meaning the cancer has spread to her bone marrow) with survival rates as low as 20-40%. Sophie has completed 70 days (2-3 days of combination chemotherapy every 10 days) of intense chemotherapy which went really well and resulted in Sophies primary tumour shrinking by 95%, it also cleared the bone marrow.
Sophie had surgery to try to remove as much of the primary tumour left on 15/06/2009. Surgeons removed 95% of the tumour that was left. Sophie has really suffered since her surgery. She was in intensive care for a while as the doctors noticed she wasn't "coming round like she should have been". Her liver function was high, her kidney function was high and her bowel wasn't working properly. Overall with the help of the specialist doctors Sophie was in hospital for nearly 1 month.She was allowed home 8 July and things seemed ok apart from the fact Sophie's lymphatic system is damaged and she can only eat certain foods and be on a special feeding milk at night. Sophie was admitted back onto oncology ward as the infection markers in her blood were high. She has been on every kind of antibiotic and they have tested everything, which is good in one way. If her temperature stays normal through the night she might be able to go home today (20th July).
Sophie's high dose chemotherapy was supposed to be 20th July but they have been informed that as Sophie was still poorly they cannot go ahead as some children don't make it out of high dose chemotherapy with stem cell transplant.
Basically there is a hospital in new york which gives a special treatment (3f8 immunotherapy) and bumps survival up to around 80%+. She would need this treatment within 3 months of her high dose chemotherapy as the immune system has to be low for this treatment to work. The cost of this treatment can be up to a staggering $250,000 -$500,000. Realistically I don't think it will happen. My second option would be relapse therapy which again is given at the same hospital in new york and has brilliant success rates bringing patients back to remission. Again the cost is around $250,000.
Stage 4 neuroblastoma patients often go into remission only then to go on to relapse which is reflected in the survival rates, once a child relapses there is no cure in Europe, just palliative therapy for control and pain relief. Relapse is most common in the first or second year after treatment finishes. It can be up to 5 years before they say "cure". There are pictures on Sophie's facebook group at the bottom of the page if you would like to use them. Anything else, just let me know. She has over 3,000 members on her facebook group. There are a lot of fundraising going on, which to be honest is what is needed to raise these amounts of money!. It's all on Sophie's facebook group page. The total raised so far only with donation is only just under £3000, way away from the treatment price. I am sure once the people who are fundraising donate it will get larger. If you can do anything to help that would be great. You could start by joining her facebook group, it has links to her appeal and the fundraising.
Please help Sophie however you can, you can donate via her justgiving page here
If you are running the Great North Run and don't already have a charity, why not collect a bit sponsorship for this appeal? The more that do the greater the exposure.
Go to Sophie's website here
Follow her progress on twitter here
