***This page has expired, please go to https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/teamcharliewalkpart3 ***

When Charlie was first diagnosed almost 10 years ago, we came together to raise money for Brain Tumour Research, Royal Marsden, St Helier & St Georges.

We've had discos, comedy nights, mountain climbs, bike rides, hikes, walks, runs and have raised over £50.000.

Charlie has since had 2 major operations, countless rounds of chemo & hospital stays and still smiles.

We continue to help & support and are adding Magical Taxi Tours to our wonderful companies we want to support.

Our original page for this walk expired (due to pandemic!) so we've created new one to continue raising money. At the time of writing this we have raised a wonderful £8,000 for this walk and are aiming to reach £10,000.

30 walkers, 3 support drivers and 100km between us and the finish line.

#TeamCharlie

**Read Charlie's story so far**

Charlie Cox was diagnosed with an Oligoastrocytoma grade 2 brain tumour in February 2012 when he was just eight months old after suffering from seizures. On 3rd May 2012, at 11 months old, Charlie had an operation at St. George’s Hospital, Tooting, to remove the tumour that was in the right hippocampus region. After eight hours in surgery, he was moved to intensive care and the consultant confirmed that the operation went very well. Charlie’s MRI scan results were positive and showed that the tumour had been removed and Charlie was slowly weaned off of the anti-seizure medication.

After Charlie having MRI scans every 6-12 months to check the growth of the tumour, a scan in April 2014 had shown that the tumour had grown again.

The consultant said that there are three options to remove it/stop it growing, 1. To operate again, 2. Radiotherapy - but can be harmful to Charlie's developing brain at his age, 3. Chemotherapy.

Charlie's neurologist consultant had a meeting with oncologists from the Royal Mardsen Hospital and decided it wasn't necessary to operate at this stage but wasn't ruling out another operation in the future. So the decision was made for Charlie to have an 18 month course of chemotherapy which started in June 2014.

It was 13th January 2016 when Charlie finished his chemo after 43 cycles over an 82-week period. He had an MRI in February and again at the beginning of May to check that all was well.

A scan in September 2016 showed that the tumour began to grow again. Both the neurologist and oncologist discussed the best treatment for Charlie and they decided to operate again. The operation was on 3rd November, after six hours in surgery and removing more of Charlie’s brain. The surgeons were hopeful they had removed it all this time.

Charlie recovered well after the operation in 2016, many MRI scans confirmed that the tumour was gone and had stayed away for the longest time since he was diagnosed. Unfortunately, Charlie relapsed again in July 2019 with the latest scan showing the tumour had returned. Consultants agreed that it was too risky to operate at this stage due to the tumour being in the optic chiasm of the brain. Ideally, the consultant would like Charlie to have radiotherapy or proton beam therapy to blast the tumour away, but at the age of eight there are too many risks, i.e. stroke and secondary tumours. It was decided that Charlie would start chemotherapy treatment again for one year.

This started in July 2019 and the treatment was working until a scan in May 2020 confirmed that the chemotherapy had stopped working. The consultant decided, for the fifth time, it was best that Charlie starts a combination treatment of immunotherapy and chemotherapy for a further 18 months. Although this makes Charlie very poorly, MRI scans have proven that he is responding well to the combination treatment with the tumour showing less to no enhancement. You’ve got this Charlie!

#TEAMCHARLIE

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