Max was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a rare childhood cancer, and Dr Tallis and Dr van Dantzig were given a few different treatment options.
"There was a little bit of this new approach, of this watch-and-wait kind of approach — but there wasn't much literature about it, it was a very new way of treating this cancer." "I've done six months of oncology [rotation as a doctor] and I've never seen a cancer in an adult be treated like that or behave like that," Dr Tallis said.Luckily, Max's tumour shrunk — as some neuroblastomas do — and is now a third of the size it once was.
Considering how little research there was about neuroblastoma when faced with making the decision about Max's treatment, Dr Tallis said there was a clear need for more funding.