Sometimes all we need is a helping hand. And sometimes that helping hand comes from the most unlikely of sources.
For Nicola Hitchen, a 41-year-old mother of two from Chester, United Kingdom, help came in the form of her ex-husband’s new wife after learning her battle with cancer was a matter of life or death.
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‘Niki’ began experiencing “excruciating pain” in her abdomen last spring. She sought help from doctors who advised that her pain was simply her body healing from a previous operation. It wasn’t until she was admitted into intensive care that doctors were able to identify an abscess on her cervix, which was soon diagnosed as stage 2 cervical cancer.
In just a matter of weeks, her stage 2 cervical cancer rapidly progressed to stage 4, and doctors informed Niki that her tumor was inoperable. They gave her just months to live.
But with her 12- and 14-year-old sons on her mind, Niki was not going to give up that quickly. She traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, where a Chemothermia center uses a combination of chemotherapy and targeted heat therapy to treat stage 4 cancer like Niki’s. The success rate is “exceptionally high.”
After five 10-day sessions of therapy in Istanbul, her aggressive tumor has all but disappeared, along with nearly all of Nicola’s finances. Having spent more than £80,000 ($106,000) on treatments, and knowing future follow-up treatments will ring in at £10k per trip, Niki’s family is running low on funds.