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An experimental treatment rarely available in Canada may be a Fort McMurray firefighter’s last hope of survival.

Now, firefighters, friends, and Bo Cooper’s family are trying every move in the fundraiser’s playbook to pull together at least $500,000 to give the mixed-martial arts fighter one more chance to knock out an otherwise incurable cancer.

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“When the tones go off in the fire station, Bo never asks who it is, what value those people have. He just puts on his gear and goes through the doorway into the smoke to do what he’s supposed to do to help other people. And that’s what he needs. He needs people to walk through the door and help him,” Bo’s father Rob Cooper said Wednesday.

The younger Cooper, now 26, was near death when first diagnosed in 2010 with the blood cancer acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). He

Photo by Garrett Barry / Fort McMurray Today Staff

endured more than two years of chemotherapy and returned to fighting fires.

When his symptoms returned in 2014, Cooper had more chemotherapy, then a bone-marrow transplant in Calgary.