To get that fateful news, that you never expect to hear, to know that you have a diagnosis of cancer is most of our nightmares come true. Straight away floods of questions come to mind, how bad is it? Can I fight it? Where do I go to get treated? There is no doubt at all that to fight something like this, support is absolutely key!
That support can often come from places you wouldn’t imagine and for Nicola Hitchen that support came from an ex-husbands new wife!
From Chester, in the UK, this 41 year old mother of two children was experiencing pain since last spring. The Doctors thought that is was because of an infection from a past operation, but just a little time after this assumption, Niki was taken to a hospital and into intensive care.
The Doctors found that she had an abscess on her cervix, it was sadly stage 2 cervical cancer…
The bad news didn’t stop there, after around seven weeks of care in the hospital, the cancer progressed fast, stage 4 followed, then doctors told Nikki they wouldn’t be able to operate as the cancer was in a very advanced stage, she only had months to live now!
Nikki is a fighter and she didn’t give up, she went to Northumberland, then many more trips to Istanbul, Turkey to treat the ‘inoperable’ tumor there. After spending £80,000 at the facilities which high higher success rates for treating stage 4 cancer, the main part of the tumor in her abdomen had shrunk considerably.
Each trip to Turkey cost about £10,000 and Nikki was running out of money fast, her family was going to have to face some very tough decisions.
The shock was that Niki’s ex-husband’s new wife, Clare Hitchen came to her rescue and really helped!
Clare dug deep and set up a crowdfunding page, to help raise money for Nikki’s cancer treatments, they have gathered more than £21,000 in donations to help her.
Clare says:
(The boys)… “need their Mum and she deserves the chance to watch them grow into men and have their own families.”
“Niki is my husband’s ex-wife and amazing Mum to Joe and Jake”
“Niki continues to put them first throughout all of her treatment. Joe and Jake are also amazing big brothers to our 3 year old daughter and she adores them as they do her. We can do this!!”
The amazing and heartfelt response Nikki had has been really amazing!
She said:
“I’m completely overwhelmed – everyone, especially Clare, has been amazing”
“I didn’t think people liked me that much … It’s brought us all even closer together. The support I’ve been given has been phenomenal, not just from my family but from complete strangers too.”
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