A three-year-old boy whose teething problems turned out to be cancer now needs £250,000 for life-saving treatment. Teddy Sloman was said to be a normal, healthy boy until a year ago, when he completely stopped eating or drinking.
His parents Sarah and Kramer Sloman say they had suspected his aversion was from teething or the heat, until he started vomiting and sleeping throughout the day. They took the tot to his GP several times, and a paediatric hospital, where he was dismissed with constipation.
Eventually, when the problem did not cease, Teddy was sent for a chest scan and an ultrasound, where it was revealed that he had neuroblastoma, a rare and aggressive cancer.
Discovery of the tumour
Sarah, who is a children’s nurse herself, said: “He was teething initially and went off his food a bit, and there was a heatwave so we assumed that was all it was. Then they gave us the earth-shattering news that Teddy had cancer. It was a really scary time for us. It just felt so surreal that those words were being said to me. You don’t expect it to be you on the receiving end of those conversations. My work life has now become my personal life.”
Teddy, from Griffithstown, Wales, first had symptoms in June 2025, and Sarah says she was advised to massage his stomach as it was likely from constipation. But one day, while rubbing his tummy, she discovered a concerning lump, and took him right back to hospital.
On July 16, 2025, they received the devastating news that it was cancer and he was transferred to hospital immediately for more scans. The tumour was so large it filled his entire abdomen, pressing on his organs and making it hard for him to eat or even breathe, and the cancer had spread to his bone marrow.
Sarah, 40, added: “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.”
Treatment and complications
The last year has been hard, with the parents living at Noah's Ark Children's Hospital in Cardiff taking shifts so that Teddy is never alone, while the other looks after their newborn baby Joey. Teddy was put on a treatment plan which involved chemotherapy from July to September before a major surgery at Birmingham Children's Hospital in October.
He had many complications from treatment including a lung infection called pneumocystis pneumonia and mucositis, which is sores in the throat and gastrointestinal tract. He started immunotherapy on his third birthday in April and was screaming in pain, before eventually gaining eyesight issues – forcing them to stop the treatment.
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. It has been the most horrendous 12 months of our lives. We have been separated as a family. Our daily lives are always governed by cancer. It is great to have moments of laughing and playing but we are also reminded by the suitcase by the door that we have to be ready to drop everything and go whenever something goes wrong.”
Fundraising for life-saving drug
Teddy is starting to feel better now, but he vomits at the sight of food and is entirely tube-fed. The boy is at high risk of his cancer coming back, and for children who relapse, survival rates are heartbreakingly low. There is an American-made maintenance treatment called Difluoromethylornithine that helps prevent relapse, but it has just been unexpectedly withdrawn under the NHS.
Sarah looked at getting the treatment provided privately, and was quoted a whopping £250,000. She 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.”
The family have started a GoFundMe page to help pay for the medicine, which has raised over £61,000 so far – but there is still a long way to go. Sarah said: “He is the biggest social butterfly that you will come across. His strength and resilience has been the only thing getting us through. We now have this massive challenge ahead of us to try and get him the drugs that he needs to get through this. It is so humbling and overwhelming to know that complete strangers are behind us and are helping us in any way that they can.”
