Coventry family 'won't give up' raising £1 million for daughter diagnosed with cancer
Jamie Reeve's daughter, Hallie, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
The father of a young girl from Coventry says he has the 'weight of the world on his shoulders' as he tries to raise £1million to potentially save his daughter's life.
Jamie Reeve's daughter, Hallie, was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer - Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukaemia.
The very rare type of blood cancer develops slowly and occurs in young children. Jamie says, despite several treatments for cancer, little Hallie has failed to respond to it.
Jamie says, "Hallie had her second cell transplant in April. Since she relapsed after her first, Leukaemia cells hit around 40%, which was devastating.
"She had all the chemotherapy and conditioning - and things were looking really good. They got rid a lot of the cancer, down to about 4%. But something wasn't right.
"We've had really tough chats with doctors. We were called into a room last Thursday (29 June) and that's when they told us the cancer had returned."
"Our whole world fell apart, again."
Doctors at Birmingham Children's Hospital told Hallie's family that there was some hope, though.
Jamie was told about CAR-T Cell therapy, which involves the extraction and manipulation of cancerous cells in a laboratory.
The cells are manipulated in different ways in efforts to directly target and kill cancer - a process Jamie described as 'very complicated.'
Due to a lack of trials in the UK, doctors told Hallie's family the venture would need to be self-funded, with America recommended by specialists.
The Therapy is said to be 92% successful in the eradication of cancerous cells.
In order to foot the bill, Hallie's family set up a GoFundMe page to try and raise the £1,000,000 needed to fund Hallie's journey to the States.
The page currently sits at over £440,000 raised for the 'Rally for Hallie' campaign, with over 28,000 individual donators.
"Social media has been incredible, sharing Hallie's story," Jamie said.
"We're on our knees. We will do anything to save our daughter's life."
Jamie says any donations mean the world to him, Hallie and the rest of their family and says he won't stop until his little girl is cured.