A CALL has gone out to help raise funds for a young Scot who overcame a brain tumour only to relapse “out of the blue”.
Rudi Abbot, who has just turned eight, fought a battle against the cancer inside his brain which saw multiple operations, six weeks of proton therapy in Germany, and four months of chemotherapy in Edinburgh.
“The treatment’s gruelling and about as destructive to his little body as it can be without killing him itself,” his dad Ben told The National, “but incredibly he breezed through it”.
“To say he breezed through the treatment is a bit bizarre, but he went through two ten-hour brain operations, and four in total. Just insane.
“He had a tumour in the centre of his brain so they had to cut the back of his skull off and separate the two halves of his brain to get into it. Two incredible operations.”
Ben went on: “He started school a few months ago and was just starting to get back to his old self, smart quips and quick retorts.
“He was going to have to get MRIs for the rest of his life, and we’d just gone down to once every three months. Then out of the blue in February, I got a phone call at work. They said ‘it’s not good, you have to come up’. From then on it was just the worst-case scenario.”
Ben said that finding potential help for Rudi had become an “all-consuming” effort after the NHS told them they were unable to offer any further treatment.
“There is literally nothing in the whole of Europe for what he’s got specifically,” Ben said.
As the options appeared to be drying up, the family heard of trial treatments in North America. They’ve since been working around the clock to get Rudi onto one particular trial in Seattle and, Ben says, “about 80%” of the hurdles have already been overcome.
However, he says, “without the money side of things, all the other sides of things are futile”.
The fundraiser to help Rudi get over to the trial in Seattle passed £50,000 in recent days, but there is still a long way to go to hit the target.
The young Scot’s family have asked anyone to help out in any way they can, with donations of funds, or knowledge if people could help them navigate some of the complexities of the US health system.
More details can be found at tinyurl.com/HelpforRudi, or by scanning the below QR code on your mobile:
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