Kat’s toddler Teddy was just getting to know his new baby brother when the family’s world was torn apart…
My little boy Teddy came rushing in from nursery with one thing on his mind.
Peering over the edge of the Moses basket, his face lit up when he saw his new baby brother Rupert for the first time.
‘Oh, this is a baby!’ he declared proudly.
Then I showed him a badge which read New Big Brother, pinning it to his top.
As he danced excitedly around the room in the way only a two-year-old can, I thought my heart would burst with happiness.
Looking at them, I felt my family was complete, and couldn’t wait to watch them grow up, play together and be each other’s best mate.
But as the weeks passed, Teddy wasn’t himself.
It was the middle of summer, yet he seemed to catch one cold, infection and tummy bug after another.
One day, I took him to his friend’s birthday party, an occasion he normally loved.
But after a while, he came over to me in obvious pain.
‘Mummy, I want to go home, my sides hurt,’ he said.
It seemed an odd thing for a young child to say.
That evening, I told my husband Alistair how worried I was.
‘Maybe he has a kidney infection because he’s in pain when he goes for a pee,’ I said.
Next day, I took him to the GP who checked his tummy, but couldn’t find anything wrong.
He seemed to perk up at home but in the middle of the night, I heard him cry out.
‘Mummy, my side hurts and I’m tired,’ he said.
‘There’s definitely something not right,’ I said to Alistair. ‘I’m worried he has appendicitis.’
'Mummy, my side hurts'
‘I’ll take him to A&E,’ he replied. ‘You stay with the baby.’
Alistair spent the night in hospital with Teddy, but was discharged the next day with antibiotics.
‘They checked him over, but didn’t find anything,’ Alistair said.
Back home playing with his train set, Teddy perked up yet again.
Only that night the same thing happened and this time he seemed floppy.
Alistair took him straight to hospital where a doctor examined him.
‘He needs an ultrasound to check if there’s a blockage in his kidney,’ she told him.
I rushed to the hospital when I heard.
His scan seemed to take ages.
Then, suddenly, the door opened and a doctor walked in.
‘Where did you see the mass?’ she asked the sonographer quietly.
I felt my world come crashing down around me.
In that moment I was sure my boy had the one thing I hadn’t considered — cancer.
Somehow, I managed to hold it together as we were taken back to the ward to join Alistair and Rupert.
I’m not telling Alistair, I thought. I don’t want to burden him yet.
But the next day, after Teddy’s MRI scan, we were called in to speak to the doctor.
I took a breath, knowing deep down it wasn’t good news.
‘I’m sorry to tell you Teddy has a type of cancer called neuroblastoma,’ the consultant said. ‘It started in the nerve cells of his adrenal glands and it has spread to his bones.’
The words swam around my head.
Next to me I heard Alistair’s voice asking a nurse if she could take Rupert from him and I guessed he felt he might faint.
‘We have a treatment plan,’ the doctor told us.
He said the words ‘chemotherapy’, ‘stem cell transplant’ and ‘radiotherapy’, but my mind raced, and I feared the worst.
In a daze, we were shown to hospital accommodation which would be our home for the next few weeks.
Suddenly, I was overwhelmed at the thought of the road ahead.
Rupert was only three months old, and it was his bedtime, but the task of breastfeeding him and putting him down felt too much.
'Where did you see the mass?'
‘I can’t do it,’ I sobbed, as a nurse comforted me.
‘Yes, you can,’ she said gently. ‘You can do it a little bit at a time.’
So I did.
We lived hour to hour in the early days as Teddy started his chemotherapy.
One of the hardest things was telling him what was wrong.
‘You have a lump in your tummy, and you need special medicine called chemo to make it go away,’ I explained.
It was heartbreaking not knowing how much a three-year-old could understand.
The chemotherapy was brutal.
Teddy got sick and weak and lost his lovely, brown hair.
‘It’s not very nice, but you have to have it to get better,’ I explained to him.
‘What if I don’t have it?’ he asked.
I felt the tears prickling my eyes but managed to put on a brave face.
‘Then the lump will get bigger again,’ I said.
During this time, the hospital provided me with a flat nearby where I could look after Rupert while Alistair stayed with Teddy on the ward.
Finally, the gruelling rounds of chemo ended, and we were called to a meeting with the consultants.
‘It’s good news,’ the doctor said. ‘We’ve cleared all the cancer that had spread.’
Relief washed over me.
I felt at long last there was hope.
Doctors explained that the next stage was a stem cell transplant.
Chemotherapy would destroy Teddy’s own diseased bone marrow.
Then his own stem cells would be harvested and transplanted back which they hoped would grow into healthy bone marrow.
We knew we still had a long road ahead and that Teddy would be in hospital over Christmas, so we celebrated early.
Family, including my parents Wendy and Ken and Alistair’s mum, Michaela, joined us for a festive dinner in early December.
We all showered our boy with presents including every single Thomas the Tank Engine toy he didn’t already have.
Back in hospital, Teddy had to be isolated, but he battled through despite getting a severe infection in the middle of treatment.
Then he had a second stem cell transplant as part of a trial, which thankfully went more smoothly.
Soon, there was more good news.
The bone cancer had gone and the primary tumour, although not operable, was responding well to the treatment.
Teddy was finally discharged on Mother’s Day.
‘Do you want a ride on the suitcase?’ I asked him.
As I pushed him out of the hospital on top of his case, it felt like the best Mother’s Day present ever.
After that, a course of radiotherapy was followed by immunotherapy, which lasted several more months.
We aren’t out of the woods yet.
While Teddy’s cancer has gone for now, we’re faced with the all-too-bleak prospect that it has a 50 to 60 per cent chance of returning.
‘If he has a relapse, there’s just a five per cent chance of survival,’ his consultant told us.
But there’s hope.
We need to raise £300,000 to take Teddy to America, where there is a drug called DFMO (difluoromethylornithine).
This not only decreases the risk of relapse, it increases his chance of survival if the disease does return.
As his Mummy, I’ll do anything for him.
I long for Teddy to run around like any other little boy and live a normal life.
This treatment will give him that chance.
Kat Lichten 35, Hassocks, West Sussex
*For more information, follow @teddyandthebigc and visit solvingkidscancer.org.uk/children/teddylichten