Little Daisy Stovell was only 11 days old when she became one of the youngest cancer patients in Britain – after a chance diagnosis by doctors.
The 22-month-old was born with breathing difficulties and, after a series of tests, doctors were convinced she had an obstruction in her throat.
She was transferred from Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Stirlingshire, where she was born, to Glasgow’s Yorkhill Children’s Hospital for further examination.
The newborn was put under general anaesthetic – her first of 30 so far – and, while she was sedated, doctors decided to carry out a routine eye check.
And it was a decision that almost certainly saved her sight – and possibly her life – after they discovered she had a rare form of eye cancer called retinoblastoma.
There are only 40 to 50 cases of the disease in the UK every year, with many children not diagnosed until the tumour is too big to save their sight.
Luckily, Daisy’s rapidly growing tumour was caught when it was just a few millimetres in size. And at just three-and-a-half weeks old she received her first round of gruelling chemotherapy.
Devoted mum Sally, 38, from Stirling, who has since raised more than £4,000 pounds for Yorkhill Children’s Charity, said: “When they said she had an eye tumour, I just thought, ‘Oh, my God’.
“It was just so left field because she was having trouble breathing and now they were telling me she had an eye tumour.
“All I heard was the word cancer and you just think, ‘is she going to die?’ because as an adult that’s your experience of cancer. It was quite terrifying.”
To confirm the diagnosis, Daisy was flown by private jet 300 miles to Birmingham Children’s Hospital – one of only two specialist retinoblastoma centres in the UK – when she was just three weeks old.
She was then flown back to Yorkhill and after two rounds of chemotherapy, administered in the neonatal ward, the tumour had shrunk by more than 50%.
Daisy then endured months of laser treatment to eradicate the rest of the growth.
She also battled back from the brink after being struck down with a life-threatening infection.
But against all odds, the tot, who still travels to Birmingham every 10 weeks for check-ups, has been cancer free for the last 14 months, although it will be a lot longer before she officially gets the all clear.
And last June, Daisy, who also had to be wear a special plaster cast for six months to correct a hip problem, was flower girl at her parents’ wedding.
Mrs Stovell, a primary teacher, said: “Since then she has just come on leaps and bounds. She really is a wee poppet and is super content, which is astonishing considering everything she has been through.
“Just before she started chemo they also tested her hearing and we were told she needed hearing aids and then at about five months we found out she had a clicky hip and needed to wear a special cast for six months. We just thought, what else can they throw at her.
“And because she is a baby, every time they look in her eyes she needs to have a general anaesthetic. It’s horrible. She must have had about 30 so far.”
Further tests have also revealed that Daisy has an even rarer chromosonal deletion syndrome, which caused the muscles in her throat to become floppy and present as breathing problems at birth.
As she has grown, this has corrected itself but the syndrome has left her with weak muscle tone, and despite being almost two she is still unable to walk.
The condition is also thought to be linked to the retinoblastoma gene and Mrs Stovell and husband Stav, an ex-paratrooper, have been warned that Daisy could develop more tumours in the future.
Mrs Stovell said: “She gets checked every 10 weeks and so far there has been no re-growth. But you feel you are never quite out of the woods. Once she gets to five years old we can start to be a bit more confident. But she’s an absolute joy and I wouldn’t change her for the world.
“And we are just so unbelievably grateful it was found so early – and all because they decided to do a routine eye check.”
Daisy’s case is understood to have been presented to hospitals across the country, to show the value of routine eye checks in newborns.
Mrs Stovell said: “Most children with it only find out when they are over a year old, when they have a squint or it shows up in a photograph from a camera flash. But by then the tumour has grown so big, a lot of them lose an eye.”
Daisy now has to wear an eye patch every morning to strengthen the muscles in the one which had the tumour to ensure her sight is not affected.
“We had to clean the house for her coming home and we couldn’t show her off to people. For the first few months of her life the only people she saw were me and my husband, my mum and dad and my brother and his girlfriend.”
The couple were told she might need six months of chemotherapy but were relieved when she only needed two.
Mrs Stovell said: “It shrunk by 50% after one month and a bit more after two. Then the rest they got with the laser and she had quite a few months of that.”
When she was six months old, her parents were dealt the devastating news that the tumour had seen a slight re-growth. But after continuing with the treatment it gradually disappeared and she remains in remission.
Her mum was so grateful for the treatment and care she received at Yorkhill, she ran the Edinburgh Marathon for Yokhill Children’s Charity last May to thank them for saving her little girl’s sight.
She is now expecting her second child in June, and is encouraging others to sign up for the event this year to help other children like Daisy.
