Reece Puddington

Hello! My name is Reece Puddington, I am 7 years old and live in Seasalter, Whitstable with my family.

In April (2008) my back and left hip were hurting me so much that after a trip to my doctors and my local hospital I had an Ultrasound Scan. After doing this on the 9th May they found a tumour on the adrenal gland on the top of my right kidney which they told mummy was Cancer.

The lovely doctors magically put me to sleep so that they could fit a Hickman line to my chest, so that they could give me a drug to help make me better. This is called Chemotherapy. I like to call my Hickman line my Wigglies. They also fitted an NG tube that goes through my nose into my stomach so that I can be fed a special milk overnight as I kept losing too much weight.

For the next 6 days I had to be a very brave boy and have lots more tests done before I could start my chemotherapy. The tests results revealed that the cancer had spread to my bone marrow, sternum, the left side of my pelvis and my right femur. My condition would now be known as Neuroblastoma Stage 4.

Since then I have had 8 rounds of chemo, 4 lots of a stronger chemo, stem cell harvest, major surgery, a high dose chemo followed by a Stem cell transplant, radiotherapy and 6 months of cis retonic acid tablets. As well as all of that I have had shingles, sepsis and countless blood and platelet transfusions.

Neuroblastoma is aggressive and affects about 100 children in the UK per year between the ages of 1 and 5. Of these hundred children only 40 will live to a certain point in treatment, so I have a 40% chance of beating this although Neuroblastoma has a habit of coming back.

Although my treatment is going well at the moment, there is up to an 80% chance that I will relapse. If that were to happen, the UK would be unable to offer a cure. The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York are able to treat Neuroblastoma children like me who relapse using an pioneering Antibody treatment but I need YOUR help!!!

£500,000 is needed for me to complete the treatment, which covers the initial treatment and the cost of any complications that may be encountered.

No donation is too small! Just think...if 500,000 people donated just £1 I would reach my target!!!