Teen cancer victim Kelly Turner's dad Martin makes heartbreaking Christmas plea for help to pay for treatment
09:01, 17 December 2016
All the Turners want for Christmas is for Kelly to get live-saving treatment in America.
And they want their 16-year-old daughter, suffering a rare form of teenager cancer, to live on for many more Christmases.
That was the moving audio message from the Dover teenager’s father Martin making a festive appeal for help to pay for the total £1 million needed for the specialist treatment in America.
Scroll down for audio
Mr Turner, speaking to our radio station kmfm, said: “All we need for Christmas is for Kelly to go to the USA.
“We’re so very fortunate enough to be supported by the residents of Dover, Deal and Folkestone who have been totally awesome.
“This is vitally important and urgent. Kelly is only 16. She is so talented, clever, bright an artistic and very positive you can help her. We need our Kelly to live a long and fruitful, normal life and to live through many more Christmases.”
People in Dover and beyond have for months been holding fundraising events for Kelly and Mr Turner in the recording also thanks three rock stars who have offered their support.
Bryan Adams encouraged a collection among fans at a concert in Canterbury in August and Ricky Wilson, of the Kaiser Chiefs, recently visited Kelly when she was in hospital for another round of chemotherapy.
Roger Daltrey, singer for The Who, has given support as patron on the Teenage Cancer Trust.
Mr Turner’s three-minute audio message tells the entire store from when Kelly was first diagnosed with cancer in October 2015 and was then given two years to live.
She has desmoplastic small round cell tumours, which is a sarcoma, and which currently affect only 20 teenagers annually worldwide and so far she has 20 rounds of gruelling chemotherapy.
NHS UK will not provide surgery in Britain and the only place that can do it is the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York but at a cost of $1.2 million or £1 million.
Now the centre has agreed to do the surgery initially at a cost of $500,000 or £406,000 at the present exchange rate.
Fundraising will then continue for the remaining $700,000 (about £568,400) for treatment such as immunotherapy.
The fundraising by yesterday (Friday ) stood at £350,000.
You can donate online to justgiving.com/fundraising/kelly-turner2000.
You can also give to the Kelly Turner Fundraising account at the NatWest bank in Dover: sort code 600704, account number 39767000.
Several high street businesses also have collection tins for Kelly so cash can be given.
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