Newark family launch £100,000 appeal to support former Newark Town Football Club player who is suffering from rare cancer
A desperate family have launched a £100,000 appeal to save their teenage son’s life after he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
Dan Evans, 18, of Newark, was diagnosed with stage four Primary Mediastinal B Cell Lymphoma (PMBCL) a year ago.
Since then, he has endured chemotherapy, radiotherapy, clinical trials and CAR T treatments, however, all have failed and his devastated family have been told there is no more viable treatment left available on the NHS.
They were told to take Dan home from the hospital and to make memories for one last time as his time was short.
However, they have now discovered a combination of drugs – which have proved successful in trial – could treat him, but is not available on the NHS for Dan’s form of cancer.
Instead, they have to buy the drugs and pay for the treatment privately so have launched a GoFundMe page at https://shorturl.at/qruyD
Dan’s dad, Mark, said: “It has been a difficult ride for him I can only describe it as a roller-coaster, one minute you’re up, one minute you’re down, one minute you get good news and then you deflate in no time at all and it has been like that for all of us.
“It was devastating, we all got pretty tearful and just the thought of never seeing Dan again is extremely heartbreaking and it was for us all.”
“Dan has been extremely resilient, I am so proud. I couldn’t be more proud of my son. A lot of people say they are proud of their sons but I really am, he’s quite an amazing individual.
“Just put yourself into the shoes of either myself as a father or into Dan’s shoes as the person suffering from cancer.
“Take a look at the clock in the wall and you see it ticking and you know not before too long that clock is going to stop ticking and I just urge people to donate simply to save a life.
“We hear loads of cases of people raising funds for cancer patients and that the clock is always ticking but this one is very short and we need it immediately.”
Dan, a former pupil of Sir William Robertson Academy, Welbourn, started complaining of being constantly tired in September 2022 and was told he had a chest infection.
However, as the pain and tiredness continued, he was sent to Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, where he was given his lymphoma diagnosis.
The teenager who planned to attend Lincoln University to study geography in September was also a keen footballer who used to play for Newark Town Football Club as a goalkeeper.
Despite not being able to sit his exams. Lincoln University gave him a place based on his estimated grades, however, he had to defer the course until September 2024.
Mark said the family never lost hope as they always had good faith in the treatments and been told since the beginning that it was treatable, for them not to worry.
As treatments started to fail and percentages got smaller and smaller, the worries and fear rose, but the family was always looking out for new treatments with hope.
Mark added: “Dan is the kind of young man who researches a lot online and because all this stuff is online and you can find out about it so easily, Dan had educated himself to the point where he could speak to the doctors on their level, he could relate terminology, and even educated us to a degree.
“Even now, this is probably the darkest it has been for us as a family, as long as there is a little bit of hope I am always hopeful.”
Dan will need at least eight or nine cycles of the combination medications and these will be administered every 21 days intravenously.
The medications alone are over £10,000 for a single cycle, which are based on the NHS prices, that the family has access to. However, it does not include the staffing costs and other medications involved.
Mark said: “This is why we are absolutely frantic trying to get as much money raised as we can so that when everything starts again in the new year they might say come down tomorrow or come down next week.
“It doesn’t happen overnight as there are protocols that need to be followed but it is urgent that we have at least some of the funds to start treatment.
“The amount of time that Dan has is short, it is extremely short, he is holding a lot of hope for the new treatment as the numbers are quite positive.”
In the first few days, it has already raised more than £21,000.