My brother needs your support to conquer Cancer

Dear all,

We are a family of four, expats, residing in Dubai. I am presently studying in Loughborough University. My parents, my brother and I were a happy family till January 2016, when my mother was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer. We had the hardest of times during her treatment in India. We were relieved for a while after her surgery and held onto the thought that she is cured for good. To our worst despair, the disease relapsed again in January 2021. She underwent another surgery, this time in Dubai, followed by a series of radiation therapy. She has recovered in a way, however not to the best of her health.

The transition period from May 2021 (after completing my mother’s radiation therapy), till August 2022 was the deciding phase when we were coping up with the situation. Just when we thought that things were getting back to normal, my brother, Ruth was diagnosed with Lymphoma.

Ruth is a charming boy of 17 has always been a sight for sore eyes. He plays cricket actively and is a straight A student in school. He finished year 11 with straight A’s, a rather excellent result and was rewarded for his performance by the school, but this celebration was short lived and he had to put his dreams to rest.

What started as a minor cough and a slight discomfort in his chest turned out to be something none of us could have ever expected. Around the end of August 2022, a tumor, the size of a cricket ball, was detected on the right side of his chest which turned out to be cancerous. After several hospital visits and diagnosis, he had to be put under chemotherapy for around 5 months. Everything had to be on hold, which included restricted hangouts with his friends, no going to school, a very strict diet and obviously, no physical activity, which meant he had to put playing cricket on hold. After a lot of struggles by my parents, and Ruth himself, the tumour was still very stubborn and had only reduced in size after 6 rigorous chemotherapy sessions. However the tumor remains and so do the cancer cells.

A CT scan and biopsy performed around the beginning of January 2023 showed that not all the cancer cells were destroyed and a target cell treatment for 4 sessions is underway as another attempt to destroy the remaining cancer cells, but there is always room for error, and so the final attempt would be a treatment called “CAR-T Cell Therapy” which requires us to spend a rather large sum of money.

CAR-T cell therapy is a type of treatment in which a patient's T cells (a type of immune system cell) are changed in the laboratory so they will attack cancer cells. T cells are taken from a patient’s blood. Then the gene for a special receptor that binds to a certain protein on the patient’s cancer cells is added to the T cells in the laboratory. The special receptor is called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR). Large numbers of the CAR T cells are grown in the laboratory and given to the patient by infusion. CAR T-cell therapy is used to treat certain blood cancers.

CAR-T cell therapy is an exorbitantly costly treatment. While we are in the process of gathering specific information on the procedure time and cost from certain specific hospitals, the estimated cost provided is anywhere around US$800,000 to US$1Million (as per treatment costs in USA or Europe). The cost depends on what type and how many sessions are required. This can only be determined once the reports are studied in detail by the hospitals. The cost is a little cheaper in India, however as per our knowledge there are still trials going on and no proper authorized treatment is available.

My father being the sole bread earner for the family and both us brothers still studying, with finance being drained during my mother’s treatment and now my brother’s, he neither has the required funds nor the capacity to generate them for the CAR T treatment.

Ruth is an extremely bright boy with an equally brighter, if not more, future ahead of him. He still tries to live a normal life but it sure is evident that it only gets more challenging for him. Besides us, he also had to make a lot of sacrifices for himself to fight this deadly disease and it is not only putting his health, but also his future in jeopardy…and he still has so much to experience in life.

It is my humble request if all of you could help us out, more importantly help Ruth out in these trying times. I honestly do not know a better way to put this, but this is the only chance he has to come out strong from this deadly disease.

I have purposely not provided any pictures. If you would require pictures then I request you to email me on [email protected] and I shall send you pictures on your email.

Thank you in anticipation for all your support.

Warm Regards

Rishab