“This is our life, this is our life. One minute you’re thinking everything is ok and we’re trying to make plans and have some family life. That’s our day over.”
Three-year-old Teddy Sloman, from Griffithstown, was diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma cancer in June 2025- a rare cancer that affects around 100 children a year. A fundraising campaign has been launched to fund treatment to prevent a relapse- treatment that is no longer available in the UK.
Sarah, Teddy’s mum, was holding a hot chocolate and sat on one of the comfy sofas in the foyer of Cwmbran’s Parkway Hotel on Wednesday morning this week, sharing his incredible story when her phone rang.
A few minutes later, Sarah told me it was the hospital, and they needed to bring Teddy in, adding that their “day was over.”
She finished off the hot chocolate, joking (I hope) that the drink was her breakfast and “probably her lunch”.
Together for Teddy
During our chat, she thanked the many people who have backed the ‘Together for Teddy’ GoFundMe campaign.
Sarah said: “We need to make sure that we beat this cancer to justify everything that we’ve put him through. Before we had to start asking [for donations], people have been offering their help, which has been outstanding and humbling and quite frankly overwhelming.
“It’s been an incredibly sad situation that you find yourself with a three-year-old with such a brutal cancer. However, the last couple of weeks it’s brought a tear to a lot of people’s eyes to see people come together.
“It’s all about everyone coming together and just having a nice time. That’s the thing that I’m enjoying the most. We did a little Toddle for Teddy last weekend. It became the birthday party that he never had because he was in hospital for his third birthday day having a rather unpleasant drug. He had a really severe reaction to it, which meant that he was on maximum-dose morphine as well as other painkillers at the time.
‘Normal family time’
“He’s got like 12 little friends all around the same age, and we went for a toddle around Pontypool Park and then stayed for a picnic and play, and it was just lovely to see everybody there with their T-shirts, because we’ve all got ‘Together for Teddy’ T-shirts all sat there all just for five minutes having some kind of normal family time.”
Kramer, Sarah’s husband, is from Abercarn, and she said the community there had been incredible- and it’s led to support for the campaign “spreading across the valleys” and the UK.
The couple’s second child, Joey, is 20 months’ old but was born two months premature.
Teddy’s initial treatment saw him spend ten months in the Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospital for Wales with “periods of isolation” meaning he only saw his mum and dad.
Now he’s back home, Sarah is enjoying the “brothers being able to play and squabble and cause havoc.”
Paediatric nurse
Sarah, a paediatric nurse with Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, said her job and Teddy’s diagnosis meant the “professional hat and the mum’s hat” have led to her “work life being 24/7”.
“My work life is my home life,” she said. “It’s just never-ending- the amount of tabs that are open in my brain constantly. I haven’t slept for 13 months. It’s relentless, but even relentless doesn’t feel like it cuts it anymore. Every time we think we’ve hit the lowest point, it’s something else.”
Their 24-hour focus on Teddy and Joey means there’s little time for the couple to plan events and raise money.
She said: “That’s why we’re so grateful for everybody’s love…and fundraising and ideas.”
A home office in their house is a medical room with a “clean area” and supplies.
She said: “That’s the heartbreaking thing for me as a mum. He thinks that this is normal childhood. He thinks it’s normal to go to sleep in an anaesthetic room and wake up with a central line or with a stitch across his entire abdomen or to go through all these things to have to be followed around with a backpack when he’s on his feed or when he’s on this pump now.
“But in saying that, he is so resilient that he’s become a firm favourite in the hospital.
‘A social butterfly’
“Everybody who comes into his room gets a ‘hello,’ or if it’s somebody new, he goes, ‘what’s your name?’ to make the introduction. He’s a social butterfly and calls passers-by into his room to say hello.
“He made friends with Annette, the domestic on the ward, and will tell her if she’s missed a bit on the floor, because if it’s ‘too wet’, he’ll say, ‘the dolphins will be swimming’.
“He’s a busybody into everything like a typical toddler, but with an infectious smile and personality to go with it.”
Donate to ‘Together for Teddy’
You can donate to ‘Together for Teddy’ through this GoFundMe page.