Family Of Young Cancer Sufferer Frankie-Rose ‘Overwhelmed’ By Support Of Strangers Who Paid For Her Life-Saving Treatment

A family that had to put their home up for sale to pay for their daughter’s life-saving cancer treatment are ‘overwhelmed’ with the support of strangers who have paid for her treatment.

Little Frankie-Rose needs life-saving proton beam therapy that’s not available in the UK, meaning they had to raise £160,000 to send her to the USA for treatment.

Heartbreakingly, the 7-year-old’s parents had to put their home up for sale in order to pay for the treatment – before well-wishers raised the money on a fundraising site the family set up.

Frankie-Rose’s condition was initially dismissed as ‘growing pains’ in May 2014 before her mother noticed she was falling over a lot.

On her sixth visit to the GP, the schoolgirl was sent to hospital where doctors found a cancerous tumour on her brain.

She’s had ten weeks of chemotherapy and lost 9kg, but despite this, the brain tumour has tripled in size.

Her parents Michelle and Sam Lea were told she needs life-saving proton beam therapy but there is an eight-week waiting list for the surgery on the NHS – time the family simply does not have.

he only way to save Frankie-Rose’s life was to send her to the USA for the treatment, which claims to offer a 100 per cent chance of preventing secondary cancer (where cancer cells break away from the primary tumour) occurring.

Her parents were willing to make the family homeless (they have two other children) in order to pay for Frankie-Rose’s treatment, admitting it was the ‘only choice they had.’

“We are desperate. Right now all we can think about is getting Frankie to America for the treatment she needs to survive,” Michelle Lea told ITV News.

“We will live in a box if we need to as long as we are together. We have worked hard, our house is all we have but we will sell it to save her.

“Some people might criticise us for making the family homeless when we have two other children but I would rather do that than have to tell her brothers we let Frankie die.

“What choice do we have? If we wait for NHS funding it will probably be too late.

“It would be nice to have a home to come back to after America, but nothing is more important than saving Frankie.”

Incredibly, a fundraising page set up to raise money for Frankie-Rose’s treatment has raised £180,000 in less than a week.

But in a devastating turn of events, Frankie-Rose is suffering a further setback as a build-up on her brain means that she's now unable to fly.

Now her family are desperately searching for a similar treatment in Europe where the family can drive their sick child to.

The family have also appeared on national news trying to raise awareness to bring the treatment to the UK.

More information is available on Frankie Rose’s Facebook and fundraising page.

[New brain tumour cancer vaccine]

[Childhood cancer risk for bigger babies]