Read Charlie’s victory against medulloblastoma, told by his mum, Beverley:
“Charlie had been ill for about 10 weeks and we’d been backwards and forwards to the doctor. He’d been vomiting and there was a bug going around school so we thought nothing of it. He was complaining that his head hurt and his eyes looked tearful, even though he wasn’t crying. After five or six weeks, the doctor sent Charlie to hospital for further tests but they couldn’t find anything wrong so he was sent home.
He’d lost weight and was having severe headaches so I knew something was wrong. We went to A&E but he wasn’t showing any symptoms, no temperature or anything. The hospital tried to send us home but I refused to go anywhere. My boy needed a scan and I knew it. After the scan, the consultant came to see us and took us to a side room; I knew something was really wrong, Charlie had medulloblastoma.
We drove to another hospital and he was put on steroids straight away. When we walked into the hospital and I saw kids with pumps and bald heads, I couldn’t believe what was happening, ‘we shouldn’t be here’, I thought. Charlie needed a seven-hour operation to remove the tumour, followed by intensive radiotherapy. The radiotherapy caused burning on his head and spine. He stopped eating because his oesophagus was burnt too, so he was on a nose feed at night.
Charlie also needed one year of chemotherapy to fight the medulloblastoma, with treatment every six weeks. During this time, our whole family life was on hold, but we had great support from everyone, we all got through it together.
We learnt to accept what was happening and learnt to cope with everything that was thrown at us. The last scan was six years after he was first diagnosed. When they told us that they didn’t need to see us anymore, what a relief!”
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