A 16-year-old girl battling cancer has been forced to raise funds for her own treatment after being told she is too young and too old to be eligible for it on the NHS.
Faith Shone suffers from leukemia, caused by the high doses of chemotherapy she received two years ago to treat a tumor in her leg.
Doctors say stronger doses of chemotherapy could cause her heart to fail, meaning her only options are stem cell and CAR-T therapies as part of a trial.
But 16- and 17-year-olds are not eligible for any medical trials for disease treatments, because they are not classified as adults or children.
Faith Shone, 16, is raising funds for her own cancer treatment after being told she is too old and too young to be eligible for NHS trials.
If Faith was under 16 or over 18 she would be able to take the test, but her family now need to raise £70,000 to get the treatment privately.
Faith’s father Tim, 43, said: ‘It’s a race against time and in many ways very unfair.
‘If Faith was younger, or 18 or older, we would immediately put her on trial for free.
‘But because of this crazy anomaly of 16 and 17 year olds not having them, we have to deal with a fundraising emergency first.
‘And if doctors had not dismissed her symptoms for months, she would have been eligible too and would have caught the disease earlier.
“This blind spot is ridiculous and must affect many teenagers, given the number of children who have cancer these days.”
Faith, from Leigh, Greater Manchester, was 13 when she discovered a lump on her leg and tests revealed it was a rare sarcoma requiring intensive chemotherapy.
He also underwent radiotherapy and an operation to remove the tumour, which meant he was now cancer-free.
But the schoolgirl began to feel exhausted and dizzy when she woke up and also started bruising more easily than usual.
Faith, pictured with her sisters Isla, 10 (left), and Skye, 13 (right). Faith was found to have developed leukaemia caused by the intense chemotherapy she received when she was 13.
Doctors told her family not to worry and eventually gave her some folate tablets, as her vitamin B9 levels were low.
A bone marrow sample was placed into her spine and in April this year she was diagnosed with leukemia, caused by the intense chemotherapy she received when she was 13.
Tim says if doctors had listened to the family’s concerns first, then she could have received treatment in a medical trial while she was still 15.
He said: “We had been asking the doctor for months because something was not right. She was bleeding and had bruises.
“They didn’t believe those were the symptoms and so they didn’t investigate further.”
Doctors have offered her intensive chemotherapy, but there is only a 10 percent chance it will work and an 80 percent chance it will get worse.
Faith, who will study fine arts at university in September, has also been offered palliative care, but the family is still raising funds for stem cell therapy.
Tim said: ‘We went last Friday.
‘A consultant in London said they didn’t want to give Faith any more chemotherapy because of the damage it would do to her immune system.
‘The only thing they could do now was offer palliative care.
Her family is now hoping to raise £70,000 to allow Faith to receive the treatment privately.
‘I asked Faith what she wanted to do and she said she didn’t want any more chemo and ending up bedridden and dying.
‘It’s better to have fun if you don’t have much time left.
‘But we still have this opportunity for stem cell therapy and that’s where fundraising comes in.
“It’s still incredibly frustrating that all of this could have been diagnosed and treated more easily months ago, when Faith was still 15.”
Donations can be made at https://www.gofundme.com/f/bsm9h-saving-faith.