Isla Caton

Hello my name is Nikki Caton and I’m Isla Catons mummy, I’m sure most of you as West Ham fans have already heard about Isla’s heroic fight against stage 4 neuroblastoma cancer, but here is a little run down on what’s happened in Islas short life so far! - and a little about why we need your help so desperately.

Isla was diagnosed with cancer at 2 years old. After 3 months of fighting to get her seen by doctors and being so so unwell we finally made it to Great Ormond street hospital, where our story really started! I remember so vividly feeling such relief that someone was going to now help me save my baby and even though I’ve never been so scared, I had a feeling of calm, I was overwhelmed by what I’d been told and even passed out when the words were said to me.

But after that something kicked in and I knew that no matter what else I did in this world that my job was to save Isla’s life and I have made this my life’s work! She had 97% of her bones covered in cancer and a soft tissue tumour of 22cm in her abdominal area. Isla was put in to trial a new chemo and has, from that first day, gone on to do all trial treatments. She has been through so so much and it would take a week to read it all, but basically this is a small run down:

Chemo, radiation, brain surgery, surgery to remove main tumour, 100s of General anaesthetics, bone marrow aspirated more than 50 of these, Mibg therapy, immunotherapy, blood transfusions, steam cell transplant and that’s just a small amount of it all.

We have travelled near and far to get Isla the best treatment out there and this took us to Spain for two years and was all paid for privately by wonderful, kind people. Anyway we returned to the UK last July to take part in a new trial in Southampton and it wasn’t going well, but on Christmas Eve after a week of scanning it was discovered that Islas cancer was progressing and that she could no longer be on this trial, so that brings us up to the present day.

We have now spent the past few weeks fighting to find a new treatment, but due to COVID this is almost impossible. It’s also impossible to go abroad as the borders are shut. Even for life saving treatment, countries like Spain are not letting children enter, so we have spoken to doctors from the UK, Spain and the USA and decided to start chemo again here in London with the hope that COVID starts to get better and new trials will open.

Unfortunately we now have to start to find a way to raise the much needed funds for the treatment as it’s so expensive to go abroad and private treatment has to be paid for, so we are now asking everyone please can you help us get Isla the life saving treatment she so badly needs.

She has fought like no other and has always done so with such spirit. She is full of life and we even found out last week that her leg bone had been snapped in half in a nasty break from the cancer and do you know we didn’t have a clue, she never moaned or had any pain relief! She even had a party and played and danced and can you imagine what her tiny body has been through for that to not even register!

She has spent her life fighting and in pain and still is always so so happy, she deserves a long healthy life more then anyone. If my love could save her she would live forever but I can’t and I need you all to help me save her life, so please if you can help please do, even if it’s a small amount .We are so very grateful for every single penny and also for your love it means so very much xxx

https://www.justgiving.com/campaigns/charity/thebradleyloweryfoundation/islacaton

This is Islas just giving page for Islas hospital treatment the money doesn’t come to us it stays with the charity to be used only for medical treatment only.