Paediatric nurse issues heartbreaking plea to the public as 3-year-old son diagnosed with rare cancer
Paediatric nurse Sarah Sloman is appealing for help after the treatment to prevent her son's rare cancer returning was withdrawn in the UK, as the mum-of-two says it's been a 'living nightmare' of a year since her son's diagnosis of neuroblastoma.
Sarah, 40, and husband Kramer, 43, are parents to three-year-old Teddy and 18-month-old Joey.
Joey was born two months premature, joining the family a week before Christmas 2024, and Sarah told LADbible that her family was 'only just feeling over all the trauma and chaos that that had brought' when Teddy got sick.
Symptoms started in June 2025, with Teddy's parents initially thinking it might be teething problems, but the boy stopped eating or drinking, would sleep for hours and then began vomiting a lot.
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As a nurse Sarah knew something was wrong and felt a lump in Teddy's tummy, and then on 16 July last year she and Kramer were given the heartbreaking news that their son had been diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma.
"We were told it would be up to us"
Sadly, the couple said they'd hit a 'devastating setback' as the maintenance treatment which prevents Teddy's cancer from returning has been withdrawn from the UK, so they'll have to pay for it themselves now.
The couple have launched a GoFundMe to raise money to pay for Teddy to continue getting his maintenance treatment, and their only options lie in the US or Italy.
Sarah said the news that Teddy's treatment wouldn't be continuing was 'very sudden', as just a few weeks ago they were informed that the American company responsible for the treatment was taking it out of the UK.
She said: "We were told that it would be up to us to go and find what medication was out there, and if we wanted to have any further medication then it would be our decision and our resources.
“That's been one of the biggest pressures in an already time-limited world, there's not enough hours in the day to attend to Teddy's cares and needs.
"We've suddenly found ourselves with a very substantial potential medical bill and very little time to resource those finances, because the drug has to start within a few weeks of the immunotherapy finishing."
"We've been running on fumes for the last 12 months"
For Teddy that's going to be about the end of September, and there are two treatment options in the US and one in Rome,
“It's a highly stressful situation for a very emotional situation at a time when me and my husband were already running on empty," the nurse said.
"We've been running on fumes for the last 12 months because every time we think things can't get more complicated or get worse, they then somehow do."
Finally able to take Teddy home, the family have been doing their best to make it work, but he can't eat as one of the treatments he was on caused him to 'blister from his mouth all the way down his gastric tract'.
If he tries to eat it makes him vomit, so he's on a feeding tube his parents need to make sure doesn't come loose, and Sarah says it means 'he can't be a free child like any other'.
At one point there was only 900 grams of weight between three-year-old Teddy and 18-month-old Joey.
"He thinks childhood is this way"
"The unfortunate thing is that he thinks childhood is this way and it's just normal to go to sleep the one moment and wake up with a central line or with all these things being done to him," Sarah said.
"But he still always wakes up with that smile on his face."
Teddy spent his third birthday in hospital because he was in 'excruciating pain' from an immunotherapy treatment that staff on the ward had said was the 'worst reaction' they'd ever seen.
While he spent most of his birthday asleep as he was on morphine and other painkillers, the children's charity Noah's Ark got him a giant elephant balloon (Teddy loves elephants), so when he woke up the three-year-old was 'ecstatic that there was a giant elephant in the room'.
The family have also been supported by the charity Latch while they spent almost a year living in the hospital with their son.
“It's an impossible life that we’re living at the moment"
Neuroblastoma is a rare and aggressive cancer, a tumour that grew in Teddy's body filled his abdomen, pressing on his organs and made it difficult for him to eat or breathe.
Sarah says she and her husband moved into the hospital to be near Teddy, while her parents had to take Joey in to live with them.
"One parent can stay in the cubicle with Teddy and then the other one can stay in the accommodation that's provided there," the mum explained, as she and Kramer took turns to be by her son's side.
"We went in on 16 of July last year and then we didn't leave until March of this year, I think it was straight through.
"During that time we went to Birmingham Children's Hospital for the surgery and we'd also been to London for the radiotherapy."
When Teddy was in London anyone who went near his room was in line for a 'scuse me, what's your name?' from the boy, and his mum says that he also made best friends with the cleaner and makes sure to use a stethoscope to listen to the chest of every doctor who listens to his.
Still, she's said they've been living an 'impossible life' because they can never switch off.
"It's going to be full steam ahead"
Right now Sarah, Teddy and the family are waiting for a few things.
A medical team in American needs some information to work out of Teddy fits their criteria for treatment, and they'll have to wait for his current round of immunotherapy to end in September.
After that there'll be full body scans and some of Teddy's bone marrow will be taken for biopsies to see if they can declare he has 'no active disease'.
Sarah said: “It's not until we actually have those scans cancers that we will know if the cancer is at bay for now, because they don't say remission for this type of cancer.
"It's no active disease, and then as soon as we get that declaration that's when we can then proceed with whichever drug we're going to use."
Once they get their path will be 'full steam ahead' either travelling to America or or sorting out prescriptions to buy the treatment that will keep Teddy's cancer from returning.
Joe Harker