A BRAVE Barrow mother-of-two with advanced cancer hopes the public will help her fund pioneering treatment not yet available on the NHS.

The family of Christine Berry, of Ainslie Street, has set up a GoFundMe page to raise £50,000 so the 56-year-old can receive specialist therapy for cancer which has spread from her bowel to her liver and lung and now her brain.

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After several doses of radiotherapy at Royal Preston Hospital, doctors cannot do any more treatment on the former care worker's brain tumour but there are options abroad, including clinics in Germany, that can offer new non-invasive procedures.

Miss Berry has vowed to fight the cancer and look at every option available at home or abroad.

She said: "I'm not prepared to whither away."

The mother of two has exhausted all the options available on the NHS and first underwent chemotherapy to try and shrink the initial bowel cancer in early 2015.

However, the symptoms gradually got worse in recent months.

Miss Berry said: "I thought it was just a virus at first. I was seeing these squiggly lines and I was losing my balance."

Sadly, the disease had spread further and just two months ago she was given the devastating news she had cancer of the brain.

Fundraising bid

Her daughter Mandy Berry has been busy researching possible cures and found the Hallwang Clinic, near Stuttgart, could offer the first treatment for between £30,000 and £50,000 depending on how advanced the cancer gets.

Miss Berry, 30, who works as a teaching assistant at St Pius X Primary School in Schneider Road, Barrow, said: "I really need everyone's help to get my mum treatment that the NHS can't provide for her.

"Any amount you can give will help towards getting my mum treatment that is not available on the NHS.

"My mum like thousands of other people deserves a chance."

The family have also been getting advice from doctors at Harley Street in London and another option is called CyberKnife therapy which uses robotics to deliver beams of high dose radiation to tumours.


Leah Bracknell played Zoe Tate in Emmerdale. The case echoes that of former Emmerdale actress Leah Bracknell who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

Her husband set up a GoFundMe page in October to pay for cutting edge private immunotherapy at the Hallwang Clinic and members of the public rushed to donate what they could, collecting more than the £50,000 asked.

The average stay at the Hallwang Clinic is about a month and the treatment effectively trains the body's defence system to attack cancerous cells.

Germany is very often the place where advanced British cancer patients travel for help as facilities there have fewer regulations so can provide treatments that have not been ruled safe yet in the UK.

Speaking about the initial bowel cancer symptoms two years ago, Miss Berry said: "I wasn't getting a lot of symptoms. I was just going to the loo a lot and I went to see my doctor and they did a blood test.

"My advice is go to the doctor and just try and be strong and go with everything you can."

Bowel cancer symptoms

- Persistent change in bowel habit, especially going to the toilet more often or diarrhoea for several weeks;

- Blood in the stools without other haemorrhoid symptoms;

- Abdominal pain;

- A lump in the abdomen;

- Bloating or weight loss.

Cancer facts

- 352,197 new cases of cancer in 2013;

- 161,823 deaths from cancer in 2012;

- 50 per cent of patients survive cancer for 10 or more years in England and Wales;

- 42 per cent of cases of cancer are preventable.

Source: Cancer Research UK