A FAMILY is hoping to raise 250,000 to travel to the United States and secure treatments for their five-year-old son who was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma.

Jack Mackey was recently diagnosed with stage 4, high-risk Neuroblastoma a rare childhood cancer that begins in developing nerve cells.

Jack’s mum, Sarah, and the rest of the family, who live in Burnham-on-Sea, launched a fundraising campaign to make sure they could travel to the US after Jack reached remission here in the UK.

Burnham and Highbridge Weekly News:

The treatment in the US would lower the chance of relapse occurring and give Jack a better chance of survival if it did return.

Sarah said: "One month ago, our lives were normal and now Jack is on a long and gruelling treatment path.

“Three weeks ago he started to complain of leg pain and started to limp.

“We had two visits to the GP, they advised that it was just a viral infection.

“On Thursday, January 25, Jack seemed much better, and he went to school as normal.

“When picking Jack up from school his teacher told me he had been upset that his leg hurt.

“Jack was then up all night in pain, I took him to A&E in Weston, and they did an X-ray of his hips and told me everything was fine & to just give him regular ibuprofen.

“However, this did not help. After another night of pain and crying, I phoned 111 I was advised to take Jack to A&E and request blood tests.

Burnham and Highbridge Weekly News:

“Then they decided to do an ultrasound on Jack’s abdomen. We were soon called into a private room to speak to a consultant, we were told during the scan that they had found a mass sitting above Jack’s right kidney.

“We were told that Jack was presenting well so it was probably nothing to worry about.

“On February 1 Jack had an MRI scan to look at the mass more clearly. We were then told the MRI scan was much more concerning than the ultrasound images, that evening we were told that Jack had cancer and we heard the word Neuroblastoma for the first time.

“Over the next two weeks, Jack had many more tests including, biopsies, MIBG scan, CT scan, bone marrow aspiration, and a Hickman line fitted ready to start treatment.

“Then on February 15, we got called back to the hospital, and we were told that Jack had stage four high-risk neuroblastoma and had been given 40-50 per cent chance of survival.

"Jack needs to reach remission in the UK before travelling to America for the additional treatment. This gives us around a year to raise the funds."

Jack is currently receiving chemotherapy and then will need surgery, high-dose chemo, stem cell rescue, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy.

So far, nearly £13,000 has been raised.