Cancer mum needs $50k
Family seek help to pay for lifeprolonging therapy
The partner of a young mother diagnosed with a rare cancer is pleading for help to give the woman he loves another chance at life. Daniel Milo, of Auckland, is asking anyone who will listen to help raise funds towards a $50,000 treatment that would help to prolong the life of his fiancee, Elaine Iketau.
“Please, please, please. I beg you. I plead to you,” he asks on a Givealittle page the family have set up.
“Please give my precious fiancee, our kids’ perfect mum, a chance at life and living longer with us.
“Your generosity will secure Elaine the treatment she desperately needs.”
Iketau, 31, last month received the devastating news that she had an incurable cancer: stage 4 pancreatic neuroendocrine carcinoid cancer.
It is the same rare disease Apple co-founder Steve Jobs succumbed to in 2011.
In Iketau’s case, a tumour has spread from her pancreas to her liver. Surgery is no longer an option, so controlling the cancer is the only way to prolong life and to give her more time with her children, partner and family.
Speaking to the Herald yesterday, Iketau did not know exactly how much time she had left, only that doctors had estimated “years”.
She gets emotional when speaking about her 9-year-old son Lalakai and 6-year-old daughter Lorielle.
“I want to be a grandma. I want to see my kids be adults. They know that
To help Elaine
I’m not well. They know that mummy’s sick. But I’ve got a lot of hope and prayers.”
She is yet to start chemotherapy, but has been found to be eligible for a treatment recommended by her oncologist and dubbed peptide receptor radionuclide therapy.
The treatment, however, is not funded in New Zealand and will cost $50,000. She will have to travel to Australia to have it done, if the money is raised.
Iketau, who left her job as a call centre operator after the diagnosis, insists she and Milo are coping with rent, utility and grocery bills. They have good family support and had three jobs between them.
But they say the cost of the treatment is “money we don’t have”. They admit it’s hard asking for help, “but please share”.