Kelly Turner will fly to America this summer for her life-saving cancer surgery.

The specialist clinic will give a final date following results of her latest chemotherapy.

The 17-year-old from Dover is expected to travel at some stage during the school holiday and hopes to be ready to return home to study for her A levels in the autumn.

Her father Martin told the Mercury: “The precise date is to be confirmed to us but it will be this summer. We don’t know how long she will have to be out there for.”

Mr Turner said that he and Kelly’s mother were naturally apprehensive for Kelly but also excited that the treatment is finally going to happen.

He said: “Nobody wants their 17-year-old kid to go under the knife but this is the first really positive step.”

Kelly has a rare teenage cancer called desmoplastic round cell tumours, a condition that was diagnosed in October 2015 when she was given only two years to live.

The NHS would not carry out the specialist treatment but the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center corr in New York offered to do the complete treatment for £1 million.

That would cover surgery, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

It agreed to do the surgery once the first £400,000 was raised, which happened by last winter.

However the success of the chemotherapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital in England has bought her more time by shrinking and stabiilising the tumours.

It gave her the chance to catch up on her GCSEs and take her exams last month Jun after her studies had at first been totally disrupted by her illness.

Mr Turner said: “Kelly has an incredible ability to recover from her chemotherapy, she can recover in days. But the treatment attacks both the tumours and good cells.

“There is a long term effect so we need to get her away from the chemotherapy as soon as possible.”

The Kelly Turner Fundraising appeal continues to raise money for the follow-up treatment in New York.

Events by local people have been consistently organised since last summer.

The sum raised by today stood at £562,680 according to Kelly’s JustGiving page.

You can donate by paying into the NatWest bank account number 39767000, sort code 60-07-04.

Or you can give via the website page justgiving.com/fundraising/kelly-turner2000.

For details of forthcoming fundraising events for Kelly see next week's Dover and East Kent Mercuries.