
When she was four years old, Sophie's mum, Donna, started noticing that she was acting strangely. She stopped playing with her toys and didn't want anyone near her. She kept getting colds, started having seizures and had chicken pox 19 times! At first Donna thought it might be connected to her achondroplasia, but following lots of test and scans, a large cancerous tumour was found in her chest. She was diagnosed with stage 3 PNET/Askin's tumour - a tumour in the bone or soft tissue.
Sophie underwent ten weeks of gruelling chemotherapy before having surgery to remove 50% of the tumour. The rest of it couldn’t be removed because the tumour was wrapped tightly around two of her ribs causing them to break. She also had 12 million stem cells removed so that they could be harvested and put back later. Radiotherapy was not an option because of the location of the tumour so instead she started a new course of high-dose adult chemotherapy.
"When Sophie started to lose her hair she couldn't understand why and asked me to glue it back on. It was heart-breaking, so I made her a promise that the next morning I would shave off my hair so that we would look the same" - MumAfter the adult chemotherapy, Sophie underwent further surgery to remove the two broken ribs and her family were told that she was cancer free. Unfortunately, the joy that followed was short lived as the consultant had some more devastating news for Sophie’s family. Sophie’s cancer will return, and when it does there will be nothing more they can do for her. They were told that they should spend some time with Sophie making memories. "As a family, we weren't prepared to cope with the news of Sophie's diagnosis. All I could think was that I couldn't lose my baby girl" - MumOur family support team are supporting Sophie's family emotionally and financially so that they can make as many happy memories with Sophie while they can. Sophie is currently having monthly check-ups, plus MRI scans every three months. Information correct at time of writing: November 2019 |