Cancer shock spurs efforts for young dad

Neil McCready, his wife Sarah and their son Myles.

Friends and relatives of a young dad diagnosed with terminal cancer have been overwhelmed by the response to a campaign to send him, with his family, to Disneyland Paris.

The fundraising campaign for local man Neil McCready (27) - who was given no more than two years to live after what he believed to be gout turned out to be a rare cancer called Synovial Sarcoma - brought in £14,000 to pay for the family trip and help support them during the tough times ahead.

According to his great-aunt, Doris Fairfull, Neil - at 6’9” a “strong, gentle giant” - met the news of his illness “head on” and now means to donate £1,000 each to the Synovial Sarcoma Fund and MacMillan Cancer to help people in similar circumstances to his own.

Married for just four years, and father to Myles, who turns three in August, Dunmurry man Neil is active in the community, as a drummer in Kilmakee Presbyterian Church band, a Boys’ Brigade officer and a member of Lambeg Orange and Blue Flute Band.

Neither smoker nor drinker, the Seymour Hill man attended Lisburn’s Lagan Valley Hospital, with a sore neck, on January 1 this year; lesions were discovered on each of his lungs and later identified, at Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital, as malignant tumours.

Mystified doctors were finally able to determine, when Neil mentioned suffering from gout, that the lung tumours were secondary to what was in fact Stage Four Synovial Sarcoma in his right foot.

The cancer, he was told, could be treated with chemotherapy but could not be cured; Neil was given 18-24 months to live.