Support Tane Lopers Cancer Battle!

Tanes health started to deteriorate early in 2019. He was experiencing continuous stomach pain, weight loss, vomiting and diarrhoea on a daily basis. There was a long process of elimination before Tane was first diagnosed with erosive gastritis and celiacs disease. However, Tane continued to lose weight rapidly and was still experiencing all of the above months later. Over a 6 month period of time, Tanes weight went from a healthy 72kgs to a very unhealthy and potentially life threatening 47kgs.

Rachel took Tane to the emergency department at the beginning of November 2019, this was where their lives were tipped upside down. On the 13th of November, Tane was informed he had a rare type of blood cancer called Angioimmunoblastic T-Cell Lymphoma Non-Hodgkins. This is where the Loper family's battle began and Tane was about to realise what a massive fight he had ahead of him.

After Tane underwent surgery to take a biopsy of his stomach lymph nodes, as well as a bone marrow biopsy along with further tests and his first cycle of chemotherapy, he was informed his cancer was at stage 4 and was involved with his bone Marrow. This was extremely hard for Tane to come to terms with! Not only had he been told he had cancer, he also had to digest the fact it was a rare type of cancer. This was a terrifying time, even though there had been some success with treating Angioimmunoblastic T-cell Lymphoma in others, because of it's rarity there is not a lot of knowledge around treatment. So this became a time of trial and error. Tane had to put his trust into a medical team he didn't know and a system he was not familiar with. He was also now dependant on various daily medications to help control his symptoms, unfortunately, these brought about their own, sometimes debilitating side effects.

Tane has to date completed 6 cycles of chemotherapy and is now getting ready for a Stem Cell transplant. This entails Tane and Rachel travelling to Christchurch hospital, firstly for the harvesting of Tanes stem cells which means staying in Ranui house for 10 days. Then they will come home for a few weeks while they grow Tanes stem cells. After this comes the big trip back to Christchurch for the transplant. Tane and Rachel will have to remain in Christchurch's Ranui house for 6+ weeks where Tane will recover from the transplant. During this time he will have no immune system, he will be unable to leave the hospital apartments and will require someone with him at all times. Because of this they have had to make the hard decision to take their youngest daughter (10 years) out of school to stay with them in ChCh. They have also had to leave one of the older children (18 years) behind to care for the house and family pets.

Obviously, Tane has not been well enough to work during all of this and he has had no income since October and they have been dependant on Rachel's income to support the family. This meant Rachel has had to juggle work, family and caring for Tane, which has not been easy. As if this wasn't enough, Rachel has just been dealt the devastating blow of job loss. She is currently on unpaid leave to support Tane in the next step of his treatment.

As you can imagine this has been a very difficult time for the Loper family and we all know how difficult it is to keep up with household and day to day living expenses at the best of times.

So what does this mean for you, the person reading this?

This is where you can help a very deserving family in their time of need. I would like to be able to ease the financial burden on Rachel and Tane and raise enough money to help them cover the cost of keeping their family home in Dunedin, household utilities, groceries, accommodation costs, travel to and from Christchurch for Rachel as well as other family members who will assist in supporting them. Tane and Rachel have also said that if there is enough money raised to help cover all of this any remaining funds will be donated to the Dunedin Hospice and the Blood Cancer and Leukaemia Foundation.