Vanessa’s Battle with Stage IV Metastatic Melanoma

On Friday 8th July our wonderful friend Vanessa received a life-shattering and heart-breaking diagnosis of Stage IV Metastatic Melanoma. Extensive testing has now also identified that she has a number of cancerous tumours throughout her body including in her brain, lung and liver. 37 year old Vanessa is an incredible mum to her three year old daughter Millie and loving long time partner to Lewis.

Vanessa is now ready to undergo treatment. However, her oncologist (Dr Chris Jackson) has said that there is only one combination of immunotherapy drugs that will give her the best chance and she must receive both of these. Unfortunately one of these drugs, Ipilimumab is not publicly funded and comes at an extremely large financial cost of $120,000 for initial treatment. The other drug, Nivolumab, is publicly funded through PHARMAC.

This Give a Little Page is an opportunity for family, friends and the wider community to support Vanessa, Lewis and Millie through the extremely tough journey ahead. Lets get behind this beautiful, young family and assist them financially with any health related costs so they are able to spend quality time together without the added financial worries.

It will be a tough road ahead but let's make it as easy as we possibly can for Vanessa and her family and support Vanessa to have the best chance at beating the cancer.