Our Story
Luna suffered from a rare form of cancer and just before her second birthday she was diagnosed with an Ependymoma, a brain tumour which attacks the central nervous system. She went through extensive surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
This disease has only a 15 per cent survival rate and when the doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital gave up hope on Luna, the family’s only option was to raise funds to seek treatment overseas.
This started at the Burzynski Clinic in Texas where Luna spent six weeks in September 2011
Although there were varying degrees of success, it seemed the treatment was too aggressive for her little body to cope with.
In March 2012 they visited Dr Woolf in Boston who used pioneering treatment to analyse a piece of Luna’s tumour to create specific therapy, which was having fantastic results. Whilst Luna was on two of the seven recommended drugs, she really was the best she’d been for four years. Sadly the tumour continued to grow and became dangerously close to Luna’s brain stem and in June 2012 the family were given the devastating news that there was nothing else that could be done for Luna.
The family’s strength throughout these awful dark days was made all the more apparent by the strength shown by this amazing little girl. She finally fell asleep, with her family by her bedside, on 8 August last year (Actual date to insert).
Luna’s parents, Lucy and Mario, wanted something good to come out of everything they had fought for with Luna. And so “Luna’s Little Stars” was born.
The charity is set up to help other families in similar situations, requiring support from overseas professionals and also by sending terminally ill children on trips to Euro Disney to create some special memories for the families to cherish.
Some of us are lucky enough to have met Luna. Some of us are lucky enough to love her and through this we can dream that something good can come out of something so unfair.
