Leah…my little miracle!

My daughter Leah…..a very vivacious, loving, caring and sociable little girl.  She loved going to nursery, playing with her friends and reading to her dollies.  At weekends she raced around on her push bike, going to the park and visiting granny for chocolate.  She loved holidays in the caravan and was always interested in everything around her.

All your worries, moans and groans before that dreaded day, mean absolutely nothing the day you are told your daughter has a malignant brain tumour. That is the day my world came crashing down.  In February 2010 at the age of 3, Leah started to get intense headaches, sickness and loss of balance, a couple of days later she was diagnosed with Anaplastic Medullablastoma.  With a slim chance of survival she started a very intense treatment programme.  Surgery, followed by 4 cycles of nasty chemotherapy, stem cell harvest, 44 sessions of radiotherapy under general anaesthetic, high dose chemotherapy in isolation and stem cell transplant.  Most of the first 9 months were spent in hospital, but Leah was truly amazing, she never lost her sparkle and had a will to get better like no other.  When the medical team said she should be tired, she was whizzing around the ward, playing with dollies, making funny hats for the doctors and nurses to wear, singing and laughing.  She never made a fuss about having treatment, she was an inspiration to many other parents, the problems only really started when it was time to have a wash or clean her teeth. Leah sailed through her treatment but unfortunately in November 2010 the cancer grew back and she started to lose her balance, by January 2011 she couldn’t walk, then lost the use in her hands, she started a palliative care course of treatment but by July 2011 lost her voice.  Still determined to go to nursery, she used my hands to do all the activities she loved so much. Unfortunately she contracted Sudamonas infection and shingles in September 2011 and from there on became very sleepy.  By the end of December 2011 she was barely opening her eyes at all and was unable to swallow.  Then suddenly at the end of March 2012 she woke up completely out of the blue.  I dashed around collecting all her Christmas toys together for her to play with thinking she’d soon fall back to sleep. But thankfully, she didn’t! 

As this was so out of character it was decided that she’d have a scan.  Unbelievably the scan showed that since she was last scanned in July 2011 the cancer in her brain had shrunk significantly.  Why?  No one knows as Leah hadn’t had any form of treatment since July 2011!