“Sara’s Last Chance — A Mother’s Cry Against Time”.2350

💔 Sara’s Last Chance — A Mother’s Cry Against Time 💔

Sara fainted in my arms.
Another round of chemo burned through her veins, and cancer — cruel, merciless, relentless — showed us once again how powerful it could be.


There were days when only morphine could quiet her screams.

Four months ago, she should have begun antibody therapy — the final stage of treatment after her tumor surgery. But instead, we hit a wall.


A wall built not of medicine, but of bureaucracy.

Because of one technical rule, my daughter was “disqualified from the protocol.”
In Poland, that means no treatment, no continuation — no hope.

Now, after twenty rounds of chemotherapy, her veins are burned, her body exhausted.
The cancer could return at any moment.
Our enemy now isn’t only the disease — it’s also

time.
If relapse comes, Sara will die.

When Childhood Ended Too Soon

It’s been over a year and a half since our world collapsed.
Sara was just a happy little girl then — full of curiosity, laughter, and life. She loved playing outside, drawing, and cuddling her Mickey Mouse toy.


But one day, that bright world ended.

October 2015 — I remember the panic in the doctor’s eyes during her first ultrasound.
Her skin had turned pale, her belly was swollen, her energy gone.


We rushed to the hospital, believing it was something minor.

It wasn’t.

The doctor’s voice trembled:
“There’s a mass… fourteen centimeters… it covers three-quarters of her abdomen.”

I felt the world stop.

Diagnosis: Stage III neuroblastoma, an aggressive adrenal cancer — MYCN positive, meaning the tumor could grow and spread with terrifying speed.

I was told to prepare for my child’s death.


And even though I had once worked in palliative care — surrounded by patients who were dying — nothing could prepare me for this.

When Sara fainted from pain, I broke.


At night, while she slept, I cried silently into my pillow.
During the day, I smiled for her — because if she saw me strong, she found her own strength too.

The Battle No Child Should Fight

Chemotherapy began.
Liters of poison poured into her tiny body, burning everything in its path — the cancer, yes, but also her childhood, her laughter, her strength.

Her veins blistered.
Her lips cracked.
She stopped eating, stopped drinking.

She lost her beautiful hair.
But she never let go of her Mickey Mouse toy.
Whenever footsteps echoed down the hospital corridor, she’d hide behind it — because footsteps meant needles.


And needles meant pain.

Eight rounds of chemo came and went.
Then six more — stronger, more aggressive.
Each one took something from her.

There were days when I thought she wouldn’t make it through the night.


Days when she whispered, “Mommy, it hurts,” and I had no words — only trembling hands and prayers whispered into the silence.

The Surgery That Could Have Been Goodbye

Nine months after diagnosis — fourteen chemo sessions later — the doctors decided it was time for surgery.

They warned me to expect the worst.
One wrong move, and my daughter could bleed to death.

Before they took her away, I kissed her soft head, clutching the tiny clothes she’d left behind.


I begged whatever power exists in this world to let her live.

Hours later — she did.
Sara survived.

But the doctors couldn’t remove the tumor completely.
A small mass remained — the part entwined with her arteries, too dangerous to touch.


A shadow that could, at any time, bring the cancer back.

The Cost of Survival

After surgery came megachemo — the strongest, most brutal treatment.
It destroyed her bone marrow, so she needed an autotransplant from her own cells, collected weeks earlier.

Her immune system crashed.
She was kept in isolation.
Even a single infection could have killed her.

She couldn’t eat or drink.
Her mouth and throat were burned raw.
She lived on IV nutrition, whispering weakly between bouts of fever and sleep.

But she fought.
Her tiny body — barely six years old — kept fighting.

After weeks, her blood counts started to rise again.
The doctors said her bone marrow was working.
Hope returned.

But radiation therapy couldn’t destroy what remained of the tumor.
And that residual mass — combined with the deadly MYCN gene — means one thing:
If the cancer returns, she will not survive.

The Unforgivable Word: “Disqualified”

Four months have passed since surgery.
Four months of waiting, praying, fearing.

Sara should have begun anti-GD2 immunotherapy, a treatment that destroys remaining cancer cells and prevents relapse.
But in Poland, she doesn’t qualify.

Why?
Because she received six extra rounds of chemo before her surgery.
Because her cancer is classified as Stage III, not Stage IV.
Because she “fell out of the protocol.”

She is a child — a living, breathing, smiling child — lost between medical definitions.

The only place that will take her is a clinic in Greifswald, Germany.
The treatment costs over 300,000 euros.

And now, more than pain, I cry from helplessness.
Because my daughter’s life depends on money and time — two things we are running out of.

A Mother’s Prayer

Sara spent both her fifth and sixth birthdays in the oncology ward.
I can still see her blowing out candles on a small hospital cake, whispering a wish I’ll never forget.
And I can’t help but wonder — will she live to see her seventh birthday?

She has endured twenty rounds of chemo, nine months in isolation, and more pain than any child should ever know.
Her little body can’t take much more.

If help doesn’t come soon, if treatment doesn’t start in time — the relapse will come, and it will take her from me forever.

The Plea

I am a mother whose child could die at any moment.
So I no longer ask — I beg.

Please.
Help me save my daughter.
Help me give her a chance to grow up, to dream, to live.

Because Sara still smiles.
She still believes.
And as long as she fights, so will I.

💛 Help us bring Sara to treatment before it’s too late. Read her full story and join her fight below. 💛

Thomas’s Fight — The Boy Who Found Hope When Medicine Failed.2404

💛 Thomas’s Journey — The Boy Who Found Hope When Medicine Ran Out of Answers 💛

Before cancer entered their world, Thomas was just like any other little boy — full of laughter, energy, and boundless curiosity.
He loved exploring, playing with his toys, and clinging tightly to his mum, Abby, whenever she tried to step out of sight.

“He was always a mummy’s boy,” Abby recalls with a soft smile. “He just wanted to be close all the time.”

But no one could have guessed that this clinginess — this need for comfort — would one day feel prophetic.
Because by the time Thomas was two and a half, the life they knew would be turned completely upside down.

🌤 Before Diagnosis

Thomas had been a bright and bubbly toddler, always smiling, always moving.
When he was a baby, he was often unsettled and cried more than other kids, but Abby and her husband John thought it was just part of his personality.

“He wasn’t an easy baby,” Abby admits, “but once he started walking and talking, everything seemed normal. He was happy and full of energy — just a typical little boy.”

Everything changed one summer.
The family was on holiday at the beach in December 2014 — a trip filled with laughter, sandcastles, and sunshine. But just days in, Thomas began vomiting. He was pale, tired, and uninterested in food.

At first, they thought it was a stomach bug.
But when the vomiting continued, Abby’s instincts told her something more was going on.

⚠️ The First Signs

Back home, Thomas was taken to hospital. Doctors diagnosed gastritis — an inflammation of the stomach lining — and sent him home with medication.
But nothing improved.

“The vomiting just wouldn’t stop,” Abby says. “He was exhausted all the time. Then one morning, I noticed his eye — it was turning inwards slightly, almost like it was ‘lazy’. That’s when I knew something wasn’t right.”

They returned to hospital — this time to Monash Children’s.
An emergency MRI was ordered.

Abby and John sat in the waiting room, holding hands, their hearts pounding. When the doctor finally came in, he asked them to sit down.

“He said they’d found a lesion on Thomas’s brain,” Abby remembers. “We didn’t even know what that meant. I asked, ‘Is that serious?’ and he just nodded and said, ‘It’s a very large mass.’”

It was a moment frozen in time — the air sucked out of the room.

“I remember seeing a box of tissues on the table,” Abby says softly. “And that’s when it hit me. This was the kind of room where people get bad news.”

💔 The Diagnosis

The MRI results revealed the truth: Thomas had multiple tumours throughout his brain — and even more along his spinal cord.
Some were large. Others were small. But the worst part was where they were located: deep inside areas that couldn’t be safely operated on.

Abby and John sat speechless as doctors explained the reality — the cancer was slow-growing, but there was no easy fix.
Surgery might help, but it couldn’t remove everything.

“I just kept thinking, this can’t be real,” Abby says. “Cancer was something old people got. How does a two-year-old have brain cancer? It felt ridiculous. Impossible.”

But it was real. And it was only the beginning.

🏥 Treatment and Endless Uncertainty

Thomas underwent surgery to remove what they could of the main tumour.
The operation went well — but the doctors still didn’t know exactly what kind of cancer they were dealing with. Samples were sent across Australia for analysis, but the results came back inconclusive.

Meanwhile, Thomas’s condition worsened.
He developed hydrocephalus — a dangerous build-up of fluid on the brain — and had to have a shunt inserted to drain it.

After surgery, he lost much of his eyesight.

“It was heartbreaking,” Abby recalls. “He’d bump into things — walls, furniture, even other kids. He didn’t understand what was happening.”

Weeks turned into months.
Months into years.

Thomas was in and out of hospital for surgeries to fix his shunt when it blocked, and his parents lived in constant fear — of infections, complications, or worse.

Every MRI brought more questions than answers.

Then, one day, the scan showed a new mass growing inside his brain.
And still, doctors couldn’t agree on what it was — or how to treat it.

“As a parent,” Abby says, “you just can’t process the thought that there might be no way forward. We were devastated. Completely lost.”

🌈 A New Hope — The ZERO Program

In their darkest hour, Abby and John heard about the Zero Childhood Cancer Program (ZERO) — an initiative using genetic testing to find personalised treatments for children who had run out of options.

They applied immediately — and within weeks, Thomas was accepted.

“It felt like someone had thrown us a lifeline,” Abby says. “He was in so much pain. We needed something — anything — that could help.”

Scientists took samples of Thomas’s tumour and ran deep genetic sequencing.
What they found changed everything.

Thomas had a specific mutation believed to be driving the cancer. Even better — there was a drug known to target that mutation: Afatinib, a gene therapy drug originally developed for adult cancers.

It was experimental.
It was uncertain.
But it was a chance.

🌅 The Turning Point

In late 2019, Thomas began Afatinib therapy.
At first, the side effects were rough — nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite. But slowly, things began to shift.

Two months later, an MRI revealed what everyone had been praying for: the tumours were shrinking.

“I remember the day we got the call,” Abby says, smiling through tears. “The doctor said, ‘We’re seeing a real difference.’ For the first time in years, I felt hope.”

Within weeks, Thomas’s energy began to return.
He smiled again. He played. His headaches stopped.

“He started laughing again,” Abby says. “His appetite came back. He’d ask for ice cream, for chips — all the things we hadn’t heard in so long. It was like having our little boy back.”

💛 Today

Today, Thomas is eight years old.
He still takes his gene therapy medication daily, and regular scans keep a close eye on the remaining tumours — but they’ve stopped growing.

The damage to his eyesight is permanent, but it hasn’t stopped him from living his life.
He plays with his sister, tells jokes, and even helps his dad fix things around the house.

He’s not cured — not yet — but he’s thriving.

“I don’t know what we would have done without ZERO,” Abby says. “There was no other option for us. It gave us time. It gave us hope.”

🌻 A Family Forever Changed

For Abby and John, every day now feels like a gift.
The beach, once the place where everything fell apart, has become their favourite escape again — the place they go to remind themselves of how far Thomas has come.

“He’s so full of life,” Abby says. “Even on the hard days, he smiles. And that smile reminds us that miracles don’t always come with fireworks. Sometimes, they come quietly — in the form of one more day, one more laugh, one more hug.”

Thomas’s story is one of science, resilience, and love — proof that even when medicine runs out of answers, hope can still write a new chapter.

💛 Because sometimes, it’s not about curing the impossible — it’s about finding the strength to keep going until hope finds you. 💛