Isham family’s joy at being home in Tassie for Christmas

After two years of harrowing cancer treatment for six-year-old Ned Isham – most of which was spent interstate and overseas – the Kingston family has arrived home in time for Christmas.

Emily holding Gilbert 1 with Eleanor 3, Ned 6 with dad Seth and Lucy 9. Ned Isham is back home in Hobart after a long year of treatment both in Australia and the United States. Ned is now cancer free and continuing his recovery at home with his family. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

THE Isham family is home, and counting their blessings.

After two years of harrowing cancer treatment for six-year-old Ned Isham – most of which was spent interstate and overseas – the Kingston family has arrived home in time for Christmas.

Surrounded by green hills and gum trees, young Ned said home was a vast improvement on the hospital wards.

“It’s good to be able to run around outside and go down the hill on my bike,” he said.

Even better than being home, Ned is now cancer-free.

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Only a few weeks ago Ned could barely walk, as a result of illness and side effects following his second bone marrow transplant in Melbourne in August.

Though Ned is still on medication and steroids, and will need immune-boosting medication for a couple of years, the worst is behind him.

“We’ve been so stressed and anxious, and Ned has been so sick because of all the side effects, that it’s taken a while for it to sink in: he really is cancer-free, and we have passed all the chemo and other nasty stuff,” his dad Seth said.

Ned with mum Emily Isham. Ned Isham is back home in Hobart after a long year of treatment both in Australia and the US. Ned is now cancer free and continuing his recovery at home with his family. Picture: NIKKI DAVIS-JONES

The little boy was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia at age two, and has spent the past two years enduring the harrowing side effects of constant treatments.

His mum Emily said it had been a roller coaster ride, filled with anguish and fear as they watched their son suffer.

Even Ned’s scheduled boat trip from Melbourne to Devonport, planned for last Saturday, was delayed because he developed a fever.

“It was just another day of stress and chaos – not knowing what to do,” said Dr Emily Isham, who is a Kingston GP.

In the end, Seth and the girls – three-year-old Eleanor and nine-year-old Lucy – took the boat home while Emily waited in Melbourne with Ned and one-year-old Gilbert.

Ned was admitted into hospital on Friday to treat the fever, which appeared to be from an infection caused by Ned’s central line – a long tube attached to his chest used to deliver drugs to his main artery.

The port was removed, the fever subsided and Ned was allowed out of hospital Monday morning.

“We went straight from the hospital to the airport,” Dr Isham said. Being together, and at home, was a hope the family shared for Christmas. This time last year, Ned was in an isolation ward in Melbourne while he recovered from his first bone marrow transplant.

The children have been living out of cramped apartments since Ned’s first bone marrow transplant in Melbourne in November 2017.

When that transplant failed, the family moved to Seattle to be part of a CAR-T cell therapy trial that was hoped to cure Ned of cancer.

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Ned was able to be part of the trial after a crowd-funding campaign unearthed an anonymous overseas donation of just under $600,000.

Although the CAR-T cell therapy did not cure Ned of cancer, it reduced the disease to the point Ned was able to undergo further treatment to prepare him for the bone marrow transplant that has cured his cancer.

“Things have looked really grim on multiple occasions … Ned has relapsed multiple times,” Dr Isham said.

“We are thrilled to be home … but we are pretty scarred from the last 18 months and those scars don’t heal quickly.”

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TREATMENT’S AUSSIE APPROVAL

A REVOLUTIONARY cancer treatment the Isham family travelled to the US to access has now been approved for patients in Australia.

The Kingston family crowd-funded earlier this year to raise the $600,000 needed for six-year-old Ned to have the world-leading therapy in Seattle, but in future it will be available locally for free. The Therapeutic Goods Administration approved the CAR-T therapy for use in children and young adults with a type of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, as well as adult patients with a specific lymphoma.

Ned’s mum, Dr Emily Isham, said it was great news, as the treatment was 80 per cent effective for childhood leukaemia without the side effects of chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants.

“There’s huge relief among people we know who have been really hoping to have the therapy,” she said.

The therapy involves taking out a patient’s own immune cells and genetically engineering them to hunt and kill cancer cells.