After playing in the paddling pool during the summer of 2012, a friend who is a health visitor mentioned that Phoebe’s tummy looked distended and felt hard on one side. We had all thought she had a typical tubby toddler tummy although I had wondered why skirts and trousers for older children were not fitting properly. She had been eating slightly less for a while…

At just 18 months old, Ross was diagnosed with orbital rhabdomyosarcoma – a rare soft-tissue cancer that developed in his eye. “In early June 2009, we had noticed that Ross, our 18 month old son, had a puffy area on his lower right eye. We took him to our GP who said it was probably a blocked duct and would refer Ross to the eye pavilion for clarification…”

In March 2014 I had noticed that Alice’s tummy seemed swollen over a few weeks, and it was larger on one side. Initially I wasn’t overly worried as my son had had a toddler ‘pot belly’ – so I thought it was that. She has always been a fussy eater but now she was going for whole days eating hardly anything, and saying she felt full after a few spoonfuls…