Anna has ‘world’s biggest hug’ for her £400k benefactor
BATTLING eight-year-old Anna Drysdale has sent “the biggest hug in the world” to the mystery benefactor who funded her life-saving treatment in America.
After the generous donor gave more than £400,000 days before Christmas to get the Oxfordshire schoolgirl to New York, the youngster and her family are packing to fly to America for the innovative immunotherapy treatment.
The family, from Chipping Norton, will fly on January 11 with treatment to stop her bone cancer returning due to start two days later.
Although it is expected to have painful side-effects, Anna is determined to get started.
She said: “I’d like to say a massive thank you to the kind person who helped us raise the money and send them the biggest hug in the world.
Her mother, Keeley, said: “It is all we have wanted for so long and it has been such a worry trying to think of ways to raise such a huge amount of money.
“This mystery person came out of nowhere and it was beyond anything we were expecting. Now I’m planning for us to be out of the country for half a year in a week or so. We’re starting treatment on the first available date, January 13.”
The generous Sunday Express reader stepped forward to fund the £460,000 treatment which may save Anna’s life just two days before Christmas on the condition their identity is never revealed, paying the hospital directly. The immunotherapy treatment, not yet available in the UK, targets cancer cells specifically while strengthening the immune system.
Anna will have her treatment at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering cancer centre, where the immunotherapy treatment was discovered.
It is strongly believed the innovative treatment will prevent the aggressive high-grade bone cancer, which Anna has already fought off twice, from returning. Keeley said: “I’m searching Airbnb to find somewhere to stay long-term.”
The family – mother Keeley, dad Ian and sister Ellen – expect to be in New York until at least summer. Anna’s elder sister Sarah will stay in the UK studying at university.
Keeley continued: “We’ll have to keep fundraising to be able to support her. The benefactor warned us extra costs could come up in hospital and we have travel and accommodation to take into account as well as time off work.
“We are so elated and relieved we can get Anna the treatment.”
● To donate visit justgiving.com/crowdfunding/anna-drysdale