A 7-year-old girl was given only months to live and her family is desperately trying to raise enough money for her life-prolonging treatment.
Lily Jha from Newcastle was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontin glioma (DIPG), a rare and incurable type of brain cancer.
She has been given only months to live as her treatment in the UK, palliative radiotherapy, is due to end on September 21.
Her parents are now facing a race against time to get Lily enrolled on a clinical trial that could give her another five years.
Speaking about Lily’s diagnosis, her father, Vineet, told LADbible: “Why not me? That was the first very first emotion. And the second emotion was – no matter how much they try to tell you that it’s not your fault, you ask yourself: ‘what have we done wrong?
“So, me and Jing (Lily’s mum) blamed our collective luck. We wondered if it was because we didn’t give her five-a-day?
“It is so hard to accept that and for the first three or four weeks, it was so hard to talk about it and tell family and friends.”
Vineet added: “Lily is very, very lively. She is a very sociable girl, she’s very good at making friends and she is a very good mathematician. She’s a very good older sister to her younger sister Mia, two.
“As soon as she was back to normal, she was chatting all the time, having phone calls with her friends and planning events.
“She is a chatty girl and she’s very humorous. She likes telling stories.”
Lily’s parents take every day as it comes. They hope to take her to Legoland or Disneyland if her health lets it.
“I think we can only hope for the best. We want to prolong her life and make sure that she can experience as many things in as physically possible,” Vineet added.
“She keeps telling me that one of the most important things to her is that she wants to see Mia start school, which is a year from now – so if we can make that happen for her, and make more memories with her, it would mean the world.”
People can donate to Lily by going to her GoFundMe page.
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