I know this a strange request – and I’m really hoping, given the circumstances, that the mods and J will allow me to post this on here. I will put the link to her appeal page on my profile if anyone wants to take a look or help in any way...but just a bit of background information first....

I am a Teaching Assistant in a large high school in Leeds. We also have a partner high school in one of the villages on the outskirts of Leeds. One of the pupils of our partner school (and at one time part time at ours) is, at the moment, coming to terms with cancer – she’s just 17!!! Both schools are having fund raising events for her – but unfortunately we can’t do this alone, as you will see further down the page. Here’s a little bit more about her…

"Charlotte Booth’s dream is to dance. The teenager who lives in Kippax, a small village on the outskirts of Leeds, has just started her second year studying at SLP Performing Arts College. There, she excels at all of her classes and is one of the college’s high flyers. Things were going great for the 17-year-old starlet until, much to her families’ utter devastation, she was diagnosed with a Synovial Sarcoma in her upper left lung this past July.

Since her diagnosis she has had three cycles of chemotherapy. After having the three lots of chemo over a three-month period, things had unfortunately not gone entirely as planned. The tumor had responded to the chemo, killing parts and insuring no more growth, but it had unfortunately not shrunk the tumor in the way the doctor’s had hoped.

The next step was to go ahead with surgery. This also did not go to plan. From the start of this traumatic experience Charlotte’s thoracic surgeon was confident that he would be able remove most, if not all of this Sarcoma. However, once he began operating on Charlotte, it became evident that removing the tumor was not an option as it was attached to a main artery at the root of her neck and around the nerves in her left arm. It became apparent quickly that had he started cutting she would either have bled to death or lost her arm. Dr. Milton embarked on a four and a half hour decision, which finally led him to abort the operation and leave the tumor intact due to the severe consequences that would have occurred.

The news to leave her with the tumor was broken to Charlotte the day before her 18th birthday.

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