On Dec. 28, 2018, Oscar Saxelby-Lee was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia— a rare form of cancer.

The five-year-old British boy was then admitted to Birmingham Children's Hospital for the next 10 months.

Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia starts in the bone marrow and invades the blood quickly.

If not treated, it can be fatal within a few months.

Failed chemotherapy and transplant in the UK

According to BBC, Saxelby-Lee underwent chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant in the UK in May 2019.

But nothing worked.

In September 2019, the cancer cells returned and his parents had two options before things would take a turn for the worse.

First was to get Saxelby-Lee to go through a second transplant.

The other was to find treatment in other parts of the world.

They chose the latter.

Travelled to Singapore after raising £500,000 (S$883,695)

The family found out about a trial Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR-T) therapy in Singapore and decided to go for it.

But this decision would cost a lot of money, especially for Saxelby-Lee's parents.

According to CNA, Saxelby-Lee's father worked as a builder but quit his job to take care of him.

Meanwhile, his mother worked as a teaching assistant.

Facing financial issues, the family took to social media and fundraising campaigns to seek help from members of the public.

By October 2019, they raised a total of £500,000 (S$883,695) and in mid-November, they travelled to Singapore.

Saxelby-Lee was warded in the National University Hospital (NUH).

CAR-T cell therapy

In CAR-T cell therapy, the patient's immune cells, also known as T cells, will be programmed to become cancer cell killers.

The T cells are drawn from the patient’s blood and equipped with CAR, a special receptor that binds to a specific protein on the patient’s cancer cells. 

The treatment is not in the medical trial stage yet, but Saxelby-Lee's parents still wanted to give it a try.

Saxelby-Lee will be the second child in the world to undergo this treatment.

The first child received the treatment only months ago in NUH, reported CNA.

Mother hopes he will be cured

According to CNA, Oscar's cancer count was at one per cent, and was rapidly increasing when he arrived in Singapore on Nov. 19, 2019.

He was put in isolation for months in NUH.

On Dec 18, 2019, NUH prepared him for the injection of new cells.

By then, his cancer cells had multiplied and was at seven per cent.

On Jan. 2, Saxelby-Lee was let out of isolation for 10 minutes to walk around the ward.

Live updates of his condition are posted on this Facebook page.

He has yet to be cured and will still battle symptoms of the disease, such as high fevers but Saxelby-Lee's mother hopes that he will be in remission for the rest of his life.

She said via CNA:

"It might not work, but try. If it was not for us looking for Oscar, we wouldn’t have got here. No consultant in the UK was going to send us to Singapore. The hope is he is in remission for the rest of his life— that he’s cured. But I would love to see him without any suffering any more."

Top photos via Hand In Hand for Oscar/FB.