The family of a three-year-old boy diagnosed with aggressive cancer after his teething symptoms were dismissed now faces a £250,000 bill for life-saving treatment.
Teddy Sloman, from Griffithstown, Wales, was a healthy boy until a year ago when he stopped eating or drinking. His parents, Sarah and Kramer Sloman, initially thought it was teething or the heat. After he started vomiting and sleeping excessively, they took him to a GP and a paediatric hospital, where he was told he was constipated. When the problem persisted, a chest scan and ultrasound revealed neuroblastoma, a rare and aggressive cancer.
Mother discovers lump during baby massage
Teddy showed symptoms in June 2025. Sarah, a children's nurse, was advised to massage his stomach for constipation. During one massage, she felt a lump and immediately took him back to hospital. On July 16, 2025, they received the devastating diagnosis. The tumour filled his entire abdomen, pressing on organs and making it hard to eat or breathe, and the cancer had spread to his bone marrow.
Sarah said: "He was a completely normal happy, healthy boy. The GP agreed that there was nothing obvious wrong with him. During a baby massage I felt a mass in his stomach. They just told me it was a bit of poop that was stuck and to carry on with the massages. Unbeknownst to me the mass inside his stomach was actually a very nasty and very aggressive tumour."
Intensive treatment and complications
Teddy underwent chemotherapy from July to September 2025, followed by major surgery at Birmingham Children's Hospital in October. He suffered complications including Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) and Mucositis. He began immunotherapy on his third birthday in April but experienced severe pain and eyesight issues, forcing the treatment to stop.
Sarah said: "Teddy has hit every complication throughout his treatment and bless him despite all of this he still manages to give us a smile along the way. The senior hospital staff said it was the worst reaction to immunotherapy they had seen in over 20 years."
Teddy is now tube-fed and vomits at the sight of food. He is at high risk of relapse, and survival rates for children who relapse are very low.
£250,000 treatment not available on NHS
The family discovered an American-made maintenance treatment called Difluoromethylornithine that helps prevent relapse, but it was unexpectedly withdrawn under the NHS. The private cost is £250,000. The family has started a GoFundMe page, raising over £61,000 so far.
Sarah said: "There are shockingly horrendous figures around the type of cancer that we are dealing with. To know that there is a type of drug out there that is the best chance we have to beat this very horrendous disease we need to try and get it."
