The family of a County Durham mum who is battling three brain tumours are ramping up fundraising for the next stage of her treatment.
Emma Selby, from Peterlee, was admitted to James Cook Hospital after doctors found a bleed from the most aggressive of her tumours – a high grade astrocytoma.
Doctors told the 38-year-old that there was nothing that could be done and that she, and her family, should prepare for the worst.
However, after being granted a transfer to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary for a second opinion, the Selby family were given the best Christmas present they could have hoped for – that one of the hospital's surgeons was prepared to operate to remove 90% of the astrocytoma.
Emma, who has a 14-year-old son called Thomas, underwent a successful six-hour operation and is now at home recovering.
Her brother Gary Selby said: “She has a zimmer frame to walk with because she’s lost a lot of strength. She struggles with one eye so she has to wear an eye patch now.
“It is something to do with the pressure of the tumour and the nerves running down where the tumour is.
“So she’s kind of lost the sight, it is all constantly blurry in one eye so she has to wear the patch to compensate but can see OK with the other one.
“She’s moving about the house a little bit but they said it could take up to eight weeks to get to somewhere you were before it happened. We have a way to go yet.”
Emma was first diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour in 2017, after suffering from dizzy spells, sickness, severe headaches, and a twitchy eye from 2016.
Doctors told the Durham County Council worker that while the tumour was inoperable, they were confident that radiotherapy could halt its growth.
And they were right, as a scan showed the treatment was working and the tumour had stabilised.
However, less than three years later Emma and her family were given the devastating news that a check-up scan had found a second tumour, located very close to the initial tumour which meant treatment was much harder as the same area can’t be radiated twice.
Although doctors were cautious, they decided Emma could be treated, however sadly the Covid-19 outbreak caused this to be delayed.
By the time the fitness fanatic returned to hospital in May for a scan ahead of treatment starting, a third more aggressive tumour, a high grade astrocytoma, was located.
Emma’s sister Karen launched a Go Fund Me campaign to raise funds which would enable a specialist team from a Spanish clinic to put Emma through a course of immunotherapeutic dendritic cell therapy.
It is a drug-free treatment which extracts the patient’s blood to be medically altered to make it super-fighting, before it is re-injected back into the body.
As Emma recovers from her operation at home, her family is focused on raising funds for the next round of immunotherapy.
Gary said: “We have got a couple of things to be honest, it is constant. The most recent thing was trying to get signed football T-shirts.
“We have two from Middlesbrough Football Club and we thought we’d try one of the raffle sites to see how that goes.
"We have one signature on that one signed by Ashley Fletcher, the striker from Middlesbrough, and we thought we would use that as a bit of a tester.”
To buy a raffle ticket for the football raffle visit here or donate to the family's fundraising page click here.
