A FAMILY have launched a desperate appeal for donations to pay for potentially life-saving treatment for their sick child.

Freddie Thompson, three, has a rare form of cancer called neuroblastoma. His family hope to raise £250,000 so they can travel to New York and pay for a trial drug that could help cure him.

Freddie was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer that forms in certain types of nerve tissue, last September and has since spent 80 days in hospital, including his birthday, undergoing intensive chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.

His mother, Emily Thompson, said that the last six months had been extremely challenging.

She said: “In the early stages of Freddie’s illness we were thinking, at worst, he had an infection - we didn’t even consider he could have cancer.

“Following scans we were given the news that our bubbly little boy had an aggressive, rare cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes.

“Nothing could have prepared us for this news as our whole world came crashing down. I felt as if I had all the oxygen sucked out of me, I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t talk through my tears.

“The last six months have been extremely challenging, seeing your child so poorly is not something any parent should have to go through.

“Freddie has been so brave, keeping his smile and keeping both my husband Philip and I going over this difficult time."

Emily said chemotherapy, surgery to remove the tumour and a stem cell transplant had been tough on Freddie, causing him to lose his hair and be very sick.

She said: "It’s also been heartbreaking to spend Christmas and Freddie’s third birthday in hospital. As he has been on an isolation ward he has been unable to have any visitors so we can’t wait to get home and see everyone again.”

Despite everything that he has already gone through, there is a high chance that the cancer - which has just a 35 per cent survival rate - will return.

Now the family have set up a Facebook page, ‘Freddie’s Fight’, which calls for support to help raise money so Freddie can be flown to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and be treated with bivalent vaccine, which helps create antibodies to fight the cancer and, in previous trials, has decreased the chance of relapse by 30 per cent.

Emily, from Ampleforth, North Yorkshire, said: “We have recently been given hope for Freddie when we received information of the bivalent vaccine, currently only available in America, and want to give our beautiful, sweet son the best chance of survival from this horrendous disease.”

Emily said that while the cost to get Freddie the vaccine in New York is £250,000, the potential cost of him not receiving it is "unthinkable".

“Starting with a page on Facebook the fundraising campaign has grown over the last five days," she said. "The support and generosity of everyone who has donated so far has been overwhelming and we can’t thank everyone enough.

"We still have a long way to go to reach our target but we believe we can get there. So many people have organised events ranging from cake sales to non-uniform days and dinner dances to tractor runs and we are eternally thankful to them.”

So far the appeal has raised just short of £50,000. To donate, visit https://www.facebook.com/freddiesfight1/