Raj Rana Fund

My story

Thanks for taking the time to visit Raj's Just Giving Page.

Raj is now 4 years old. Raj was diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of 2 in 2012. He had surgery twice and following chemotherapy life returned to normal. Unfortunately, after 1 year and 3 mths after chemotherapy the horrible tumour is back. So again we start out battle to overome this horrible cancer, this time hopefully for good!
Our aim to make sure more people are survivors and have options when it comes to brain tumours. Please help us by creating awareness and donating to The Brain Tumour charity via our link.

Our journey began in 2012 and is detailed below.

Let us introduce to our son Raj. He is 2 years old (turning 3 just before Christmas). He is a very happy and active boy. Those of you who know Raj well will know he enjoys nothing more than playing with his Transformers, cars and dinosaurs.

In June 2012 we rushed into A&E after Raj suddenly lost the use of the left side of his body. We were told the devastating news they had discovered a bleed in his brain. They advised this could possibly be due to a brain tumour. We were immediately transferred to John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford. Raj underwent emergency surgery and the surgeons removed most of what they suspected was a tumour. Raj recovered well from the surgery and was up and about after a few days. It was then confirmed the tumour was a malignant and aggressive one.

In September we found out the tumour had had some further growth. The hospital advised the only option at that time was surgery. This time it would be aggressive and the surgeons advised us it was going to mean Raj would be left paralysed on his left side, as they would need to remove his own cells to ensure they got the entire tumour. We made the difficult decision to go ahead with the surgery. We prepared ourselves for worst. The neurosurgeons at John Radcliffe were amazing. They managed to remove the tumour completely. Raj awoke from surgery and moved both his left arm and leg! A complete surprise to us all! He has a slight weakness in his left hand following surgery but this is improving every day. The day after his surgery Raj was running around the ward!

We can’t be more thankful to Dr Jayamohan and the neurosurgery staff at the hospital. They have set us up really well for the next part of Raj’s treatment. We are now about to start a fairly intensive course of chemotherapy to kill any small specs of cancer cells that remain and ensure the tumour doesn’t reoccur.

We decided to set up this fundraising page, as we would really like to raise as awareness and money as possible for brain tumour research. Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer in the UK of children and the research is massively underfunded in the UK. Over £500 million a year is spent on cancer research in the UK. Yet less than 2% of this goes towrds brain tumour research. We have decided to donate all funds to the Brain Tumour Charity. The charity does amazing work in both funding ground breaking research as well as raising awareness of brain tumours.

We anticipate this will be a long term effort to raise funds with various events to be planned over time. Everything from physical challenges to raffles and fund raising events. Please feel free to donate to the charity through this page.

Raj was also filmed as part of as part of a documentary for the BBC on Neurosurgery at the hospital that will be airing early next year. We will ensure we update everyone with the details on this so that those interested can view it.

Thank you for your support!

Aman & Suki (Raj’s parents)