Cancer cure for Vanda

Dear kind people,

We have to turn to you for help to save a life. Our friend and co-worker Vanda Lončar (39) needs your help. She is Leo and she has a heart of a lioness indeed, but she has been ill for many years and we fear that she will not be able to conquer the illness once again.

We seek your help so we can all together save her for her son Roko (9), for the children she is teaching math in elementary school, her family, friends and co-workers.

She has endured so much already and yet she was the one person who we all love because of her spirit and great personality.

On the other hand, her fight has been going on for 13 years now and the disease was terrifying. Her initial diagnosis was triple-negative invasive ductile carcinoma. According to cancer.org, “Triple-negative breast cancers differ from other types of invasive breast cancers in that they grow and spread faster, have limited treatment options, and a worse prognosis.”

As per Elston-Ellis's breast cancer grading system, her cancer is scored 9/9, i.e. the most severe.

At first, she won over the illness with the help of multiple surgeries, aggressive chemotherapy and radiation therapy. After 8 years, the illness returned and she underwent another two surgeries and other cancer treatments. She won for the second time, but only until July 2020, when cancer returned stronger than ever and that is when this final and toughest battle began. The tumour metastasized to the chest, surrounded the heart and aorta, penetrated the lungs and chest wall. Now the expert team of Radiochirurgia polyclinic performed extensive treatments that gave her another shot to begin to fight for her life.

Two months later we had another emergency. While Vanda was treated with aggressive chemotherapy and immunotherapy, new foci emerged. This time, it was in the liver, head (frontal region), cervical spine, thorax, sternum, neck, the remaining lung and in the bones of the pelvis. She needs another surgery. The affected lung was removed almost entirely.

The tumours are treated with radiation therapy and Vanda handles this excellently. But this cannot go on forever and she needs a “systemic” treatment that will deal with the disease entirely.

There is one such treatment available: Lynparza (olaparib) by Astra Zeneca, a drug that is used to treat metastatic BRCA+ breast cancer and this is precisely the case here, but the drug is not covered by the Croatian Institute for Health Insurance, which runs Croatian compulsory health insurance scheme. This drug is the best option for Vanda and her oncologists made so much effort to procure the drug through donation, but it all fell through.

One pack of Lyparza is almost €2,000 and she needs two packs a month for two years.

This is where you may lend your hand.

We need to fund the Lynparza treatment in the amount of €95,000, not to mention that the government insurance denied coverage of the last surgery (€20,000) and that the treatment is getting more expensive as we go.

Please, help our Vanda smile and be there for her students, let Rok have his loving mother.

Vanda and her family are eternally grateful for your kind help, your donations, encouragement and prayers.