Couple in desperate race to sell family home in the next WEEK to fund daughter's cancer treatment after doctors say she won't live until Christmas without it

A couple have vowed to make their family homeless before Christmas in a bid to raise £160,000 to fund life-saving treatment for their daughter.

Frankie-Rose Lea has been given just weeks to live, after doctors originally misdiagnosed an aggressive brain tumour as growing pains.

The seven-year-old's tumour has tripled in size and spread to her spine since she started chemotherapy in August.

Experts have told Michelle and Sam Lea their daughter's best chance of surviving is travelling to the US for proton beam therapy.

Mr and Mrs Lea had planned to cancel their August wedding, after Frankie-Rose, was diagnosed the same month. But the seven-year-old told her parents she was desperate to be a bridesmaid

Applying for the treatment, sought by the family of Ashya King, on the NHS will take up to eight weeks - time Frankie-Rose does not have.

Her tumour is growing so fast, doctors do not expect her to live to see Christmas Day.

Mr and Mrs Lea, who also have two sons, Alfie, 11, and Freddie, five, have put their three-bedroom home in Erith, Kent, on the  market in a desperate bid to raise the £160,000 needed to fund the treatment.

They said the terraced property is worth £220,000 but are marketing it at £170,000 to try and attract a cash buyer, to encourage a quick sale.

The couple said they are prepared to make their family homeless if it saves their daughter's life.

Dinner lady Mrs Lea, 36, said: 'We are desperate. Right now all we can think about is getting Frankie to America for the treatment she needs to survive.

'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.’

Frankie-Rose began complaining of pain in her legs in May this year.

Mrs Lea said: ‘Frankie-Rose said her legs were aching, so I told her to rest. 

'Like most kids her age she was always on the go but when it got worse I took her to the doctor who said it was just growing pain.’

But in the weeks that followed, Mrs Lea noticed her daughter falling over and bruises appearing on her legs.

She went back to the GP and said she was told this time that Frankie-Rose was flat footed which was causing her balance problems.

But unconvinced Mrs Lea took her daughter back again and says she was advised to take her for an eye test and again told it was growing pain.

When her daughter’s pain got worse she arranged further visits and said on the sixth occasion she was annoyed to have been booked to see a locum GP.

‘I felt he wouldn’t know my daughter and made that clear,' she said.

WHAT IS PROTON BEAM THERAPY? 

Proton beam therapy is an advanced form of radiotherapy that targets tumours with great precision.

The radiation that uses beams of protons - small parts of an atom - rather than high energy X-rays, used in conventional radiotherapy.

Unlike an X-ray, the proton stops after striking the target rather than continuing to travel through the body.

It enables therapists to direct the beam at a tumour more precisely.

The beam can be more finely controlled, in both its width and its depth, so higher doses of radiation can be more safely delivered to tumours, with less risk to healthy tissues.

The treatment has been shown to be beneficial in the treatment of many different tumours, including those found in the head and neck, eye, central nervous system, lung, prostate and gastrointestinal tract.

The precision of the pencil beam scanning makes it especially beneficial in treating tumours adjacent to critical and sensitive organs, such as the eye, brain and spinal cord.

Source: Mayo Clinic

'But to my surprise he was the first to perform a basic neurological test by asking Frankie to follow his finger with her eyes. 

'She couldn’t do it and he told me to get straight to hospital for an MRI scan.’

At Darent Valley Hospital in Kent, an MRI revealed a dangerous build up of fluid on the little girl’s brain and she was sent by ambulance to Kings College Hospital in London for urgent surgery the following morning.

The operation on July 18 revealed a mass on her brain stem was causing the build up.

Mrs Lea said: ‘I was shocked. You never think it will happen to you.

'But at the same time I had known all along it was something more serious than growing pains.'

The following week a biopsy revealed the tumour was cancerous and on August 4 the devastated couple were told the rare nature of high grade Astrocytoma giloma’s in children made it hard to predict how she would respond to treatment. 

But the position on the brain stem made it impossible to operate on and medics hoped to stabilise it with chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy when she was older and her brain more developed.

Mr and Mrs Lea were due to marry later that month on August 23 and Mrs Lea originally wanted to call off the wedding they had booked back in January but Frankie was desperate to be a bridesmaid.

‘We’d been so busy in hospital that I hadn’t arranged the cars or wedding shoes, it was the last thing on my mind but doctors advised us to go ahead with the wedding because Frankie was well enough and she was looking forward to it,’ Mrs Lea said.

But first Frankie turned seven on August 15 and the family hastily arranged a huge party, not knowing if it would be her last.

Two weeks later the couple married surrounded by family and friends. Frankie revelling in her role as chief bridesmaid.

Mrs Lea said: ‘It was all about her, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house because nobody knew what the future held.

‘She had lost some of her hair because of the surgery but she looked so beautiful.’

Doctors misdiagnosed Frankie'Rose's brain tumour as growing pains five times before her parents were told she was battling cancer

The family have also set up a fundraising page to raise money for Frankie-Rose's treatment

Frankie-Rose started chemotherapy two days later but suffered terrible side effects, including nausea, weight loss and a bleed on the brain.

And when medics scanned her last week the tumour was found to have tripled in size and spread to her spine.

That is when Mr and Mrs Lea were told proton beam therapy offered the best chance of saving her life and there was no time to waste.

The family set up a fundraising page and well wishers have already pledged more than £20,000 - but the family need to raise a further £140,00 for treatment and travel in the next week.

They put their house on the market for £170,000 this week and say making themselves homeless will be a small price to save their daughter’s life.

‘It would be nice to have a home to come back to after America, but nothing is more important than saving Frankie,' Mrs Lea said.

Donations have been flooding in, and a second page has been set up to help accept money from the public. To help Frankie-Rose visit the new fundraising page here.

Source: Dailymail