A dedicated friend is determined to do all she can to help a mum-of-three make memories with her family after a shock cancer diagnosis.
Kirsty Parnell, of Newark, was diagnosed with liver cancer after she went to hospital in February thinking she had a hernia.
She was given just months to live after tests showed she had a cancer which had started in her bowels and had also spread to her lungs.
Her friend of nearly a decade, Nicola Stafford, has set up a GoFundMe page to help the family — Kirsty’s partner Steve Harris and their three girls, aged nine ,five and five — make the most of the time they have together.
Nicola said: “It’s all just a massive shock, I can hardly believe it.
“I set up the GoFundMe because it was all I could think that I could do. I wasn’t expecting it to go as well as it has. Hopefully it will help the family do something, even just a weekend away somewhere Kirsty would like to go.”
Nicola explained that Kirsty had been feeling some pain in her abdomen in February, and had suffered from hernias after the birth of her twins — and so she encouraged her to get it checked out.
“They sent her for scans and discovered shadows on her liver. I said the liver is a hardy organ — we were quite hopeful at the time,” Nicola added, before explaining the discovery of cancer in Kirsty’s lungs and bowel.
“We were in bits. How could we not have known?”
She described the mum-of-three as “the most beautiful, kind, caring person” and her “soul sister” and explained that she had felt she had to do something to help support the family after Kirsty’s diagnosis.
Unfortunately, Kirsty has continued to deteriorate, and suffered a blood clot and an infection resulting in her being hospitalised, and doctors telling her there was nothing they could do but make her as comfortable as possible.
She is due to move to hospice care on Friday — where it is hoped she will feel a “little bit better” and have professional support.
If “worst come to worst”, Nicola added, the fund will also help the family cover funeral costs.
