“There is a saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child. Now we need a whole village to save our Linnea”
Linnea, Kristoffer Nordströms daughter, is five and a half years and comes from Karlskrona in Sweden. Her world revolved up until recently around My Little Ponies, riding her bicycle and popcorn… lots of popcorn. She who has one best friend: her beloved big brother Kristian.
That was her world – until a few months ago when she suddenly and shockingly became afflicted, and got emergency surgery for a brain tumor.
After the operation, we hoped that the bad news would end. But now the family lives in the hospital and has been told that the tumor is an aggressive variety called DIPG (Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma). The short story is that there is a heart-breakingly minimal chance of survival using established treatments.
There is a possible treatment that we are now aiming for: one that means the tumor is treated through catheters implanted directly into the tumor. Studies and reports show that such a direct treatment gives Linnea the best chance of one day becoming healthy. The cost of treatment and the journeys are very high. Higher than the average person can pay for: £ 65.000 for the first operation and then £ 6.500 for treatments thereafter. In the current situation, it is unclear how many of these Linnea will need.
Please help Kristoffer and his family!
Update July 3 2017
We know a lot of people are waiting for this so me and Giedre want to give you the fantastic news.
Linnea had her third Intra Arterial treatment today and all went well without complications, this was the first time that we added the immunotherapy to the treatment, Linneas immune system is now being taught how to recognise and attack the tumor cells itself (Autologous Dendritic Cell Immunotherapy)!
The amazing news of today is that the treatment continues to do its job and we now see further shrinkage in the tumor from the last treatment three weeks ago.
The doctors see a distinct reduction in size since last time!
We now know that this is a treatment that is working for Linnea and for the other children here in Mexico, there are now over 30 families from all over the world here.
The treatment is very effective, but also very expensive, with the combined Immunotherapy and Chemotherapy the cost is 30.000USD (250.000SEK) every third week, later once Linneas immunesystem is trained the treatment will go back to chemotherapy only.
We realise we need to do this for an unforseen time going forward and looking at the costs of each treatment and our budget we need to ask all of you who have helped us get here to help us even further in saving our daughter.
Any donations, big or small, are more than welcome, you can help us at our fundraising site.
Thank you so much everyone who has helped us get here.
Swish donations from Sweden are also very welcome, the number is: +46 723 58 09 53
Leave a Reply