NICHOLAS Petropoulos recently started a fundraiser via the Flicker of Hope Foundation for his wife Elizabeth who was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis (NF) in late 2019.

For much of this year, Elizabeth has been experiencing unexplained pain and gradual loss of movement in her right arm and further investigation has resulted in the devastating diagnosis of multiple tumours throughout her body including aggressive cancerous brain tumours.

Her prognosis of recovery is poor, with doctors and specialists advising that even with chemotherapy and radiation, her future outlook is potentially 18 months.

She inherited NF from her mother Faye, who has struggled with the condition for much of her life and is now in palliative care - Liz is married to Nick, and coincidentally, Nick’s sister Zoe also has NF.

Elizabeth and Nick are the parents of two adorable and energetic children, and Elizabeth is determined to stay positive and courageously fight this battle with everything she has.

Elizabeth knows the only hope for her family, and possibly her children, is more medical research into NF.

More research offers a flicker of hope to everyone impacted by this condition - hope for Elizabeth, hope for her children, hope for Zoe, hope for more treatments, and hope for a cure.

And so, Elizabeth’s Legacy has been established as an opportunity for Elizabeth to bring hope to others, to shine a light on NF and to help make a difference - now and in the future - by raising funds to support NF medical research.

Nick said Liz got the news that her realistic prognosis could be between 3-18 months.

“Flicker of Hope is a charity and my family were already involved in it but when Liz become sick, she wanted to raise money for research and money came into a basic Flicker of Hope fund,” he said.

“This is something she can do to help so people in the future people know more about NF because the answer at first was I don’t know and (it’s) hard to get a prognosis because there isn’t a lot of knowledge about it.

 “All money raised goes to Flicker of Hope from Elizabeth’s legacy (where) the goal is to put it to specifically Type 3 which is the least studied.”

So far, they’ve raised over $10,000 and have set a goal of $50,000 – if you would like to donate you can visit makingadifference.gofundraise.com.au/page/ElizabethsLegacy