Maysaa's campaign

Maysaa's story

Maysaa loves her two older brothers - and bossing them around even more!  

During lockdown, Maysaa became very clingy and was off certain foods. By March 2021, her parents noticed that her lips had begun to turn blue, and her tummy was distended.  

They took her to the GP, who referred Maysaa to a cardiologist. Not satisfied with the outcome, Maysaa’s parents decided to take her to A&E. Following many scans, poking, prodding and tubes she was diagnosed with stage 4 high-risk neuroblastoma, an aggressive childhood cancer that has a 40-50% chance of long-term survival at diagnosis.   

Maysaa’s family started fundraising for £106,000 to fulfil their wishes for Maysaa to access the DFMO study in Charlotte after frontline treatment, with the hope of keeping the cancer away. Thanks to the incredible support the campaign received, Maysaa was able to enrol on the study in August 2022.  

Maysaa’s campaign remains open in case she needs potentially life-saving treatment in the future not available through the NHS, which could cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Follow Maysaa's story on social media.

Treatment so far 

Maysaa had five rounds of chemotherapy with many hospital admissions for high fevers in between. As Maysaa is immunosuppressed, these fevers could not be ignored. She also underwent an extremely risky surgical procedure to remove as much of the primary tumour as possible. It took the surgeons eight long hours, and Maysaa’s family say that it was one of the hardest days of their lives.  

Once Maysaa had recovered from surgery, she had a round of high-dose chemotherapy. She remained in isolation whilst her parents took turns to care for her. Whilst in isolation, Maysaa suffered from very bad mucositis, nausea and diarrhoea. She was on a constant drip of morphine due to the extreme pain she was in.   

Maysaa then had radiotherapy and immunotherapy to complete her frontline treatment in the summer of 2022. End of treatment scans showed no evidence of disease, and she enrolled on the DFMO study in Charlotte in August 2022.

_{Solving Kids' Cancer UK's children's fundraising campaigns} 

_{Funds raised will go towards helping Maysaa and her family. If Maysaa no longer needs the funds or is in remission five years post the end of successful treatment, the funds will be used to support other children and families affected by neuroblastoma through our activities. For children with high-risk neuroblastoma, like Maysaa, the survival rate is much lower than other childhood cancers. Upon relapse, this rate reduces even further.}