A FUNDRAISING campaign has been set up to send a 46-year-old dying man to America for the treatment he believes will cure him.
Father-of-three Richard Evans is suffering from a terminal brain tumour, which is continuing to grow and affect the left side of his brain.
The former personal fitness trainer was diagnosed in 2008 with a diffuse glioma tumour after suffering from the first of many seizures caused by the increased pressure in his brain.
Although Richard wasn’t experiencing any side effects prior to his seizures, doctors believe the tumour had been growing in his brain for 14 years. Speaking from his Charminster home, Richard said: “If you could get the most complex, difficult and almost impossible tumour to treat, then that is what I have got.
“My tumour is not a solid mass or lump, it is a multitude of separate cells that has spread through my brain and the front lobe and makes taking a biopsy very, very difficult.”
The tumour is growing in the left side of Richard’s brain, the section which controls speech, memory and movement.
He said: “There is so much mass on the left hand side it’s squishing the right hand side of my brain. It’s the pressure that will kill me.”
Richard, whose children are aged 20, 18 and 15, has been offered treatment in the UK but he says it is palliative.
He even travelled to India to take part in a new clinical trial there and has sought the advice and help of many experts.
He says his last hope is Dr Stanislaw Burzynski, who works in Texas and says cancer patients have a deficiency of naturally occurring cells that control cancer growth. His alternative treatment is to use these Antineo-plastons to target cancer cells without harming healthy ones.
The treatment costs around £30,000 and according to Dr Burzynski has a very high success rate.
Richard said: “If I won the Lottery I would be straight out there and I know that he would cure me.
“It is incredibly frustrating. I am having problems eating and with things like writing. I cannot do exercise because I keep having seizures and I am getting massive headaches.
“It just about stops me doing everything. I am praying I can find a cure.”
Richard’s friend Kathy Dresman, who also lives in Charminster, is looking to local people and businesses to help raise the money needed to send Richard to America.
She said: “I want to give him every available opportunity to have this treatment.
“He has so much to live for and it is so upsetting watching him deteriorate when something could be done for him. His children are finding it unbearable to deal with the thought of losing their dad when something could be done to save his life.”
To offer help to Richard email kathyorourke11@hotmail.co.uk
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