Staff at a hair and beauty salon in North Lanarkshire are showing they’re a cut above by helping raise money to pay for life-saving cancer removal surgery for a champion dad-of-two from Harthill.
The workers at A Touch of Class in Kirk Road, Wishaw held a continuous sponsored cycle on a spin bike in the shop on Wednesday with the money raised going to help owner Yvonne Peat’s cousin Neil Moore who was stricken with three different primary cancer types in the space of 18 months.
Karate expert Neil has already seen off prostate cancer and B-cell lymphoma, that was after the 60-year-old was diagnosed with in September 2019 with GIST (Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumour), a rare cancer of the digestive tract.
Medics discovered a huge tumour that was deemed inoperable but a targeted cancer drug managed to shrink it to a favourable size for surgery, however, a few months later he was given the news that he had prostate cancer, and he then underwent surgery to remove it and subsequent chemotherapy for the lymphoma which was also discovered.
The 5th Dan former Scottish karate champion’s daughters, Caitlin and Victoria who live in Carluke, launched a GoFundMe page to try and raise £75,000 after the GIST tumour started to grow again and surgery to remove it in December 2020 was unsuccessful.
He has been given just months to live.
The family spoke with surgeons in London who believe it is possible to remove it using specialist robotic surgery but the NHS have decided against funding the operation, which had been scheduled for late January.
In an accompanying statement on the online fundraising page, the siblings say: “It will cost around £75,000 for the surgery, and to pay the costs of the specialist cancer surgeons, an anaesthetist, specialist surgery nurses, drugs, ICU, and the post-operative hospital care which could last around three weeks, as well as travel to and from clinics in London.
"It is a huge sum of money, but we would be so grateful if you could give what you can, no matter how small, to help towards funding my dad’s surgery.”
The siblings have already raised more than £17,470 but the clock is ticking and cousin Yvonne thought she would try to help out with the "TOC's Big Spin for Neil" fundraiser in the salon.
She said: “The bottom line is if he doesn’t get the operation then he won’t be here much longer, it’s terminal.
“I have a spin bike so I brought it down and we were on it from 8am to 8pm on both Wednesday and Thursday. We have a hair salon, a barbers’ and a beauty salon all in the one place. The girls just aimed to keep it going the entire day, we weren’t counting the miles. We’re just trying to raise as much as we can.
“As soon as I brought the bike round to the salon people were intrigued and asking why it was there.
“We have sponsor sheets and in the first day it was there people pledged £260. We are hoping to raise as much as possible.”
Taking alternate turns on the bike were; Louise Young, Amy Wilson, Courtney Sheviln, Molly Stewart, Niamh Giffen, Nicole Dingwall, Louise Gillet, Blane Armstrong, Lauren McConville, Aaron Scally, Rose Kennedy, and Chloe Gray.
You can donate to Caitlin and Victoria’s fundraising page for their dad at: gofundme.com/f/2vbku-help-my-dad-knock-cancer-out
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