When Alison's little boy fell at the park, doctors found something unexpected...
Hearing my kids’ shrieks of laughter, I looked over to see them running around at the water park.
‘Mammy did you see me?’ my five-year-old son Reid shouted to me.
‘I did,’ I chuckled.
My husband Mark and I
had brought our children to a caravan for the weekend and Reid had been begging us to go to the water park.
When we got home, it was all Reid could talk about.
We also had Talia, 28, — who lived with her partner — Rio, 13 and Esmee, 10.
Sometimes it was hard to balance their schedules with my and Mark’s jobs, so we had a childminder to help out.
Two weeks later, I decided to take Esmee out for a girlie day of shopping.
That morning, Rio went to a friend’s house and I dropped Reid off at the childminder’s.
‘Thanks again, you’re a life saver,’ I told her.
‘No problem,’ she smiled.
‘See you later,’ I said as I gave Reid a hug and kiss.
As the hours ticked by, Esmee and I were having a blast on our shopping trip.
Then, almost at the end of our spree, my phone rang.
It was the childminder.
‘I just wanted to let you know, we were at the park and Reid fell over,’ she began.
It didn’t surprise me because he was always taking tumbles, play-fighting with Rio or jumping off things.
'There seems to be a lump'
‘He complained of stomach pain too — but now he’s fallen asleep,’ she added.
‘OK, keep me updated,’ I replied. ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine.’
Thirty minutes later, she called me back.
‘He’s woken and won’t stop crying,’ she said.
It was unusual for Reid. He was such a happy child.
Esmee and I headed home and the childminder dropped Reid off.
By now he had stopped crying and seemed to have perked up.
‘Come and sleep with Mammy,’ I said, as I got him cuddled into bed with me.
He was restless all night and
at 4am, I was startled awake by his wailing.
‘My tummy hurts,’ little Reid sobbed.
‘It’ll be OK,’ I soothed.
I rang my GP for advice.
‘You should take him to A&E,’ he said.
It felt like a big fuss over what was probably a bug, but to be on the safe side I followed his advice.
At hospital, a doctor examined him and prodded the area around
his stomach.
‘There seems to be a lump on his left side,’ he said. ‘It could be a ruptured spleen so we’ll send him for a scan.’
He was whisked away for an ultrasound and I updated Mark and Talia, who quickly came to the hospital.
Suddenly Reid was rushed off to the resuscitation department and doctors flurried around him.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked a nurse.
‘We need to send his results to a specialist, and he needs to be transferred to another hospital,’ she said.
Reid had to be blue-lighted to a specialist unit.
Something must be wrong,
I panicked.
Mark got in the ambulance, while Talia and I followed.
When we got there, my heart dropped when I realised where they’d taken Reid.
The children’s cancer ward.
I found Mark, and a doctor called us into a room.
‘The scan revealed a large mass on Reid’s left kidney,’ he said. ‘We need to do more tests.’
He explained the mass was 10cm in diameter and was bleeding because of Reid’s tumble in the park.
I was in a daze as we
went back to the hospital
waiting room.
‘It won’t be cancer, we have to think positive,’ Mark said.
‘But he’s in the cancer ward,’
I replied.
That night, as Mark and I dozed off in the chairs by Reid’s bed, I was consumed with worry.
I can’t believe our little boy could have cancer, I thought.
Soon a consultant came to speak to us.
‘Reid has a tumour and it’s in both kidneys,’ she said.
‘Both?’ I stammered.
A few days later, she gave us worse news.
‘He has a bilateral Wilms’ tumour, which I’m sorry to say is cancerous,’ she began. ‘He’ll need chemo to shrink the tumours — and then surgery.’
'The scan revealed a large mass'
My head was spinning.
Only a few days earlier, Reid had been running around the park and now he was hooked up to tubes in hospital.
But we realised that him falling over was a blessing in disguise.
If he hadn’t, we might not have realised he had the tumour until it was too far gone.
Reid was put on a six-week course of intense chemo.
It was heart-breaking seeing my little boy going through it and he was too young to understand what was going on.
But from the get-go we were honest with him and his siblings.
‘You’re not very well, you’ve got something called cancer,’
I told Reid.
‘When will I get better?’ he asked me.
‘It won’t be long,’ I said to reassure him.
He began to lose weight rapidly, was vomiting a lot and lost his eyelashes.
The only saving grace was he didn’t lose his hair.
After an extra few weeks of chemo, the tumours had shrunk enough to operate on.
Mark and I sat in the waiting room anxiously waiting for the procedure to be over.
Then the surgeon came to us.
‘I had to take out all of his left kidney,’ he began. ‘But thankfully I only had to take out five per cent of the right one.’
Knowing Reid could live a normal life with one kidney, we were so relieved.
Ten days later, he was allowed to come home.
But nothing felt normal any more.
My little boy had to rely mostly on a wheelchair to get around. The chemo had affected the nerves in his feet and made it painful for him to stand.
He’d had a tube fitted to administer his medicines and the chemo had made him drop two whole clothes sizes.
It was upsetting to see him looking so frail and
I bought him a new wardrobe of smaller clothes.
‘We have to be more careful with Reid now, OK?’ I told the kids.
Reid still had to have chemo to make sure any remaining cancer cells were killed off.
But there was a finish line in sight and a good chance the cancer would be gone
for good.
‘You’ve got to do a trip away to celebrate,’ my cousin told me.
She decided to set up a GoFundMe to raise money for a trip to Walt Disney World in Florida.
I was shocked when
lots of generous donations rolled in and the target
was reached.
‘We’ll be able to take all the kids,’ I told Mark, shell-shocked.
On the days we were in the cancer ward, I’d notice Reid looking at the other kids ringing the bell to celebrate being cancer free.
‘That’ll be you soon,’ I told him.
To give him a semblance of a normal life, he still went to school one day a week if he felt up to it.
Now and again we invited his friends over to play with him too.
Some days Reid can’t get out of bed, but on a good day he’s out riding his bike.
For a five-year-old boy, he’s been through so much.
To help him process his feelings, he has a wonderful child therapist who sees him regularly.
All being well, Reid will be finished with chemo next month.
And I can’t wait to see him running around and being the energetic child that he once was!
Alison Scanlon, 44, Pontypridd, Rhondda Cynon Taf