Therapy test hope for Chloe

by Nigel Thompson BBC South East Health Correspondent

About 20 children in the UK each year get Chloe's form of cancer

It is the kind of dilemma every parent hopes they'll never have to consider - how far would you go to save a critically ill child ?

Darren and Debbie Wright from Herne Bay in Kent were initially told a lump on their daughter's hip was nothing to worry about.

But the pain would not go away and three-year-old Chloe had problems crawling and even sleeping.

Her condition, known as Rhabdomysarcoma, affects about 7% of the 1,500 children in the UK who get cancer every year.

Of these, about a fifth have what is known as the metastatic form of the disease.

It is this form that affects Chloe and despite intensive treatment with chemotherapy and radiotherapy aimed at curing her she has now relapsed.

There is no known cure and in this country at the moment, the Wrights are unable to get further help.

Which is why they have had to look abroad and to the United States where experimental treatment is being pioneered in Houston in Texas.

The MD Anderson Institute is part of the city's medical centre, a sprawling medical research area of Houston.

The Wright family will be staying with Chloe in Texas

It is currently testing the new therapy for the condition and Chloe is heading to the United States to take part in the trials.

Although the chances of success are slim, Mr and Mrs Wright feel it is one that is worth taking.

But the treatment comes at a price - the family have had to raise £200,000 to pay for the trip.

Family and friends in Herne Bay have held fundraising events, remortgaged their homes - anything to raise the money they need.

"We were told Chloe's chance of contracting the disease was one in a million," said her mother.

"The odds of her being cured are the same, but it's a chance we need to take."

As for how long the family will be in Texas, that remains uncertain.

But there will doubtless be keen interest in how they get on throughout Kent.

BBC South East Health Correspondent Nigel Thompson will be travelling to the US with the family and reporting for BBC News Online, South East Today and Radio Kent.