Dying doctor's debt to social media
Published: 3:02PM Thursday February 20, 2014 Source: 20/20
In many ways, Jared Noel owes the fact he's still living to two things; his baby girl Elise and social media.
Five years ago at just 28 years old, Jared was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Numerous surgeries and rounds of chemotherapy kept him going until his health took another bad turn last year. He was told he needed the drug Avastin but it wasn't funded.
"And we knew that we would probably have friends and family who would literally mortgage themselves to pay for that treatment. But we didn't want them to do that because this treatment doesn't change the outcome, it purely delays it," Jared explained to TVNZ's 20/20 Programme.
Jared's wife Hannah was only three months pregnant with their first child so they made the hard decision to fundraise. "But what changed was the fact that all of a sudden, whether or not I would be at the birth was hanging."
Jared told 20/20 he needed to raise $60,000 for the treatment and chose the site Give-a-little.
"So our friend Anna, she put it up on the Give-A-Little site and I wrote my blog and I posted the blog about 2.00pm. And within the first hour I think we had maybe two or three thousand dollars donated."
Then Jared's story went viral on social media. "And you'd log into Facebook and it would say such and such and 250 other people have shared this link."
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By 10:00pm that night the money had been raised, Jared could afford the treatment all thanks to social media, people's generosity and the dream of holding his child.
"I think it's humbling, that's what it is. It forces you to swallow your pride."
20/20 story about Jared's journey to be at the birth of his daughter, screens tonight on TV2 at 9.30pm and also on onenews.co.nz
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