A mother-of-three is fighting against the clock to raise money to fund lifesaving treatment after her itchy hands turned out to be a rare and deadly form of cancer.
Maria Barry, 58, who lives in Harrow, north west London, with her children, Nico, 32, Luca, 30, and Nadia, 27, began suffering from itchy and cracked hands during the first Covid lockdown in March 2020.
At first, Maria thought it was a reaction to a new cleaning product she was using, but in April 2022, she was diagnosed with bile duct cancer – which is rare with around 1,000 new cases a year in the UK according to the NHS – and, without treatment, she now has just three to six months to live.
The children’s nursery manager said: “The gene therapy treatment that I need isn’t available on the NHS and costs £16,500 a month privately, so we are desperately trying to raise money using a GoFundMe page.
“Anything that we can get will go towards saving my life. My kids all live at home with me and I don’t have grandchildren yet. I’m not ready to die, I’m fighting to live.”
For Maria, her issues began when her hands started to itch relentlessly.
She said: “I’d had gallstones a couple of years prior and ended up having my gallbladder removed, but other than that I’d never had any health problems.
“During lockdown, I developed a condition where my hands cracked up and I had to wear gloves. I’d initially thought it was a reaction to a new cleaning product I’d bought to clean the cooker.
“They were so itchy and I was getting aches and pains in my elbows, joints, everywhere, and I was constantly on the phone with the doctor.”
Due to lockdown, Maria couldn’t get a face-to-face appointment so had to send her GP photos of her red and sore palms.
Over the next year, she was prescribed various steroid creams, gels and UV treatments, but to no avail.
She said: “Nothing seemed to work and I was eventually referred to a dermatologist.”
She added: “It took a while to see them and, even then, they were suggesting new medication to try.”
But Maria says her intuition was screaming at her, telling her this was more than itchy skin.
She said: “I just knew something was wrong. It had been months of trying different solutions and nothing had worked. Something had to be seriously wrong so I demanded a CT scan.”
On Christmas Eve 2021, Maria was asked to go in Northwick Park Hospital for her results and – fearing the worst – she took along her grown-up children Nico, who is not working, Luca, a salesman, and Nadia, a football centre manager, for support.
She said: “The news just completely shocked me. The doctors suspected I had a rare cancer and would need to undergo a biopsy.
“I was devastated and it completely ruined our Christmas. The entire time, I just kept worrying about what was to come.”
After New Year, Maria had three biopsies which were all inconclusive.
