There is no guarantee that Bec Cooper will be eligible for a new drug treatment trial but the selfless Maryland 17-year-old has been a driving force behind a crowdfunding campaign for the revolutionary Zero Childhood Cancer program to be launched later this year.
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Cooper has been battling against cancer for the past three years and her condition is currently deemed incurable.
The Zero Childhood Cancer program is led by Children’s Cancer Institute and The Kids Cancer Centre at Sydney Children’s Hospital Randwick, part of The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, and is Australia's first ever personalised medicine program for children with high-risk or relapsed cancer.
It involves detailed laboratory analysis of each child’s unique cancer cells, to help identify the drugs most likely to kill their specific cancer.
The cost to deliver testing for the program to each child is estimated to be around $20,000, which is what Cooper is determined to raise.
“A few weeks ago I found out I’ve relapsed again so I’m just trying to get into the Zero Childhood Cancer program myself as well as trying to raise funds for other people who need to be in the program as well,” Cooper said.
“I was diagnosed when I was 14, towards the end of 2014. I have had one year of intensive treatment where I was in hospital a lot for 12 months and then went on to another treatment for 12 months but one month before I was supposed to finish that I was told that I had relapsed.”
Cooper has relapsed stage 4 rhabdomyosarcoma, cancer of the connective tissues and muscles.
“They couldn’t keep treating the same because it doesn’t work, hopefully with this program they can find something that will work,” she said.
“The high risk and the relapsed patients, we are finding it hard to be treated, that’s what the program is aiming to do, so it is a really important program to be running. Hopefully they can find something that will work against my tumour then I can be cured or at least be treated.
“Although it might be hard to speak about what I’m going through, it is important to me that other people read or hear my story, hopefully it can help them feel more inclined to donate because they know people do go through this.”
Cooper’s crowdfunding campaign is: www.donate.ccia.org.au/campaign/22/becs-story.
The high risk and the relapsed patients, we are finding it hard to be treated, that’s what the program is aiming to do, so it is a really important program to be running.
- Bec Cooper