Family’s final chance to save Corey
Hopes for sick toddler pinned on clinical trial in US
ATaranaki family are moving to the United States in a lastditch hope to save their 2-year-old son.
Corey Keeling — a boy who according to his mother is never without his gumboots and is full of energy — was diagnosed with an aggressive stage four neuroblastoma cancer this year.
After six rounds of chemotherapy and two high-risk surgeries, Corey’s only chance of survival is to travel to New York in a desperate hope of urgently being put on a lifesaving clinical trial.
Hundreds of New Zealanders have been getting behind the Keeling family with more than $26,000 raised so far on a Givealittle page, to go towards treatment costs.
His parents, dairy farmers Hayden and Aly Keeling, say they will do whatever it takes to save their wee boy.
“You don’t realise how much fight you have until you are faced with something like this. I guess that parental instinct kicks in,” Aly told the Herald yesterday in tears.
“I had this perfect child, our whole lives were all planned out, and within just a few moments it was pulled away from me.”
Corey was rushed up to Auckland’s Starship children’s hospital in March after a lump was discovered on his tummy.
The following day he started chemotherapy in response to the 12cm mass in his abdomen.
Aly, a 33-year-old Treasury analyst, said the worst part was his tumour had invaded one of his major arteries — known as the inferior vena cava — and had grown into the right atrium of his heart.
“The tumour was so close to entering one of his ventricles and if that happened he would have died.”
In June, after his fifth round of chemotherapy, Corey had a surgery that successfully removed more than 90 per cent of the tumour.
“We were so thrilled with the progress he had made. For the first time we were able to take Corey home.
“And in that time he turned 2 and he was running around the farm like a normal kid. He was driving the tractor with his dad and visiting the cows which he loves — things seemed to be getting back on track.”
But this month the family received a call to tell them Corey’s latest MRI scan showed a spot of cancer in his brain.
On September 11, Corey had his second round of surgery to remove the mass in his brain.
“We are 99 per cent that mass has been removed but he now has what’s called a central nervous system (CNS) relapse,” Aly said.
There were only two hospitals in the world able to treat CNS, she said.
One was in Barcelona and other in New York — the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Hospital.
Because Aly Keeling was born in the US and Corey has dual citizenship there, the family plan to move New York in the hope of getting on the trial.
“We have been in communication with the oncologists over there but there is a lot that is still up in the air at the moment.”
The family are due to fly from Auckland Airport tomorrow.