Sophia's Story

Our daughter Sophia is 4, last summer she become really tired and no longer wanted to go to nursery, I’d taken her the doctors and they put her down to her having her booster injections and to keep an eye on her.

I’d not long had another baby so I thought maybe this was why she didn’t want to go to nursery as she thought she might be missing out at home with us. However when they advised me that she’d started falling asleep on the table at dinner and on the rug I become even more concerned.

A few days later she had an unexplained temperature so I took her to the walk in, they advised it was nothing to worry about & to keep up with calpol, I told them I wanted her bloods taken due to the tiredness and they advised I went to my gp, which we did they following morning.

My GP advised me to go straight to the hospital which we did, following blood tests I was told she was anemic and she would be kept in until her temperature had come down. Later that day a doctor came to check her over again, this time her felt her stomach and could feel something enlarged on her left side so the following morning we was sent down for an ultrasound, we was there for quite some time and knew something was wrong, when we asked the nurse she said I’m not going to lie there is a lump, she told us she couldn’t confirm was it was but a doctor would come and see us as soon as possible, I knew from her face that this was now going to be something very serious.

Later that day an oncology doctor came to see us and confirmed she did have a tumour in her left kidney but would need an mri scan to provide more information. The next few days where the worst days of our lives & felt like forever.

After the MRI they confirmed it was a wilms tumour and it looked as though it had started to spread to her lymph nodes and her muscle.

She started chemotherapy straight away, she had it once a week for 5 hours for 6 weeks to begin with then had an operation to remove her left kidney and lymph nodes. It had completely struck in her muscle but they was concerned it my come back after treatment so we had to move up to Manchester for radiotherapy in that area. this was right before Christmas and got home 2 days before.

Along side the radiation she continued with her chemotherapy right after the operation and this was for a further 6 months.

Our other daughter has just turned one and as a new family of 4 we haven’t been able to do much together.

We are so grateful for this stay to give us something to look forward to before Sophia starts school in September,

Thank you Ben Saunders Foundation.