The clock was running. Caitlin Leggett had six months, maybe less. Her family had raised £100,000 in eight days.
Then, on a Saturday in mid-June, a brain bleed hit. Two days later, she was gone.
Her story is not unique. Across the UK, families face the same brutal arithmetic: NHS treatment stops working, private therapy abroad costs hundreds of thousands, and time is measured in weeks, not years. Caitlin, 24, had acute myeloid leukaemia.
After a stem cell transplant in December 2025 put her into complete remission, the cancer returned in May 2026. Doctors told her the UK options left were not curative.
She had half a year. The Leggetts set up a GoFundMe page on June 2. The target was £500,000 — the estimated cost of treatment in the United States.
Eight days later, they had £100,000. Then Caitlin collapsed. Similar cases keep surfacing.
In 2023, a 12-year-old boy from Manchester with a rare brain tumour raised £200,000 for proton beam therapy in Germany. He died three weeks before his scheduled flight.
In 2024, a mother of two from Glasgow crowdfunded £150,000 for CAR-T cell therapy in Singapore. She made it there, got the treatment, and died of complications two months later. The pattern holds: families scramble, the public gives, the disease moves faster.
Caitlin’s twin sister Grace was at her bedside, along with brother Ethan, 27, sister Neve, 19, and parents Jennifer, 54, and Ian, 57. Grace said the family got to speak to Caitlin before she died.
Neve put on Caitlin’s favourite pillow spray. They massaged her hands with lotion. Nurses gave them a memory box.
The Leggett twins had made headlines earlier this year for a different reason. When Caitlin was diagnosed in April 2025 and urgently needed a stem cell transplant, tests revealed something no one had known: the sisters, who had believed they were fraternal twins their whole lives, were actually identical. The discovery was remarkable, but it did not change the outcome.
Caitlin died at 2.42am on June 15. She was 24.
The fundraising page remains open. The money raised, now past £100,000, will go toward funeral costs and family expenses, the Leggetts have said. What it will not buy is the treatment Caitlin needed.
Critics of the UK’s cancer care system point to cases like this as evidence that the National Health Service, for all its strengths, cannot always deliver cutting-edge therapies fast enough. NICE approval processes lag behind research.
Drugs available in the US or Germany can take years to reach British patients. For those with aggressive, relapsed cancers, years is a luxury they do not have. The six-month prognosis Caitlin received is a standard estimate.
In practice, some patients get less. The brain bleed that killed her was sudden and severe, followed by a series of strokes. It was not the cancer itself that took her, but a complication — one that could have struck at any time, anywhere.
Her family’s tribute, released through local media, focused on Caitlin’s determination. She had raised funds not just for herself, but to highlight the choices families like hers are forced to make.
The choice between treatment at home and treatment abroad. Between what the system offers and what it does not. Between hope and the clock.
The Leggetts are now left with the memory box, the pillow spray, the lotion. And the knowledge that £100,000, raised in eight days, was not enough.
