Story

"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 is 6 years old and comes from Karlskrona in Sweden. Her world revolved up until last year around My Little Ponies, super heroes, riding her bicycle and popcorn... lots of popcorn. Our beloved daughter who has one best friend: her beloved big brother Kristian.

That was her world - until December 2016 when she got diagnosed for a brain tumor. The tumor is an aggressive variety called DIPG (Diffuse Intrinsic Pons Glioma).The short story is that there is a heart-breakingly minimal chance of survival using established cancer treatments. 

But we are her parents and refuse to give up. For the opportunities exist, if one goes beyond the most common treatment methods, and that is in Monterrey, Mexico.

Linnea is now receiving a treatment in Monterrey that is unique and ground breaking. Linnea and several children here from around the world is receiving this treatment that is helping them in a never seen before way.

She receives a multi-modal treatment of approved and established drugs directly into the area in the brain affected via Intra Arterial Chemotherapy.

Linneas tumor started to shrink significantly already after the first treatment and has continued to shrink ever since.

She has also recieved two different kinds of immunotherapies based on her blood and a biopsy of her own tumor which we shipped from Sweden to Mexico, its custom made immunotherapy just for her. Her own immune system has been trained to recognise and attack the tumor now.

The cost of treatment and the journeys is very high. Higher than the average person can pay for: $ 15 000 (120 000 SEK) for the chemotherapy plus travel. We are currently doing this every third week, but later this fall it will be spaced out to every four weeks. In the current situation, it is unclear how many of these Linnea will need but eventually the plan is to increase the time in between treatments further.

But we see that the treatment is working for Linnea and for all the other children here that are receiving the treatment.

We refuse to let the cost be a barrier to our daughter's life, and we need all the help you can provide to achieve this. Whatever you can donate, we are extremely grateful.

We so desperately want her to start school, attend school discos, collect all the swim badges, learn to ride her bike without training wheels, fall in love, see the world, and experience all the beauty that the world has to offer.

Any funds left over will be donated to research for DIPG research and thus be of benefit to other children.