Family of teenager with cancer ‘fell to floor’ after reaching £100,000 target

The mother of a 14-year-old with cancer said the family “fell to the floor” when they reached his fundraising goal of £100,000 to go to France for treatment.

Oscar Fairs, from Benfleet, Essex, was diagnosed with a 7cm ependymoma brain tumour in August 2023 and underwent seven surgeries, one round of chemotherapy and one round of radiotherapy to be told palliative care was the only option.

The West Ham U14s footballer has since been accepted onto a £70,000 treatment trial in Lille, France, with mother Natalie Fairs, 41, telling PA news agency: “When we got accepted for the trial, we were fanatic and so grateful to France.”

“We’ve just given our baby’s hands to the French and we’ve been given hope when it was taken away from us two weeks ago,” she added.

A GoFundMe page was set up to help the family raise £100,000 towards treatment, care, flights and accommodation, which they smashed in several days with help from West Ham footballers.

The team donated £27,000 and the largest shareholder, businessman David Sullivan, donated £10,000, while Arsenal footballer and former West Ham star Declan Rice gave £5,000, according to Ms Fairs.

“We fell to the floor with extreme gratefulness and appreciation,” Ms Fairs said about the family surpassing their fundraising target.

“We cried our eyes out. Me, my husband, and Oscar was in the room, we just hugged everybody. Hope was taken away, and then hope has been given back to us.

“The generosity and the wonderfulness of everybody’s vital funds to get us where we are today is overwhelming.”

The family has flown to Lille and Oscar began his treatment on Thursday, which Ms Fairs said went to “plan and there were no complications”.

The recovery period from the surgery will take a week or two, before Oscar is expected to undergo more chemotherapy.

“One day it’ll be oral chemo, the next day it’ll be chemo in his chest, the next day it’ll be chemo in his head,” Ms Fairs explained.

“We continue and continue and continue until the cancer is gone, or until it’s at a stage where either the UK or French surgeons can go back in and finally get the solid tumours out, but they can’t get the solid tumours because there’s bleed, and the bleed has the cancer in it, and every time they go in, the bleed just spreads.”

For months before his cancer diagnosis, Oscar and his family were told his symptoms were mental-health related and he was referred to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

His symptoms included panic attacks, heart palpitations, pins and needles, impairment on the right side of his body, severe headaches and throwing up, after which doctors told them to “go home with a nasal spray and put your son in a dark room for at least four days”, Ms Fairs said.

Ms Fairs said her son was “lifeless” and “breathless”, prompting her to go private, which led to her son getting a brain tumour diagnosis shortly afterwards.

Ependymoma is the second most commonly diagnosed brain tumour in children, according to Brain Tumour Research.

Talking about learning her son was being diagnosed with a brain tumour, Ms Fairs said: “I can’t explain the feeling. I can’t explain it – empty, like my whole life had just been pulled away from me, from underneath my feet.

“As a mummy, all you can do is block away all your feelings and keep this power strength and a brick wall so I don’t have any feelings anymore, like I can’t feel my feelings, because I have to be so strong for us again.”

Hugh Adams, head of stakeholder relations at Brain Tumour Research, said: “It’s greatly frustrating that Oscar and his family feel they have been forced to pack up their life in the UK to temporarily move abroad to try and save their youngest son after his tumour returned.

“We need the Government to invest more money into research for ependymoma tumours, not only to find kinder and more effective treatments, but also to find out why some tumours do not respond well and relapse.”