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Many of us use ‘The Big C’ because we don’t want to say the actual word - Cancer only a short word but instils fear in everyone. The fear, that a simple test, at the Doctors could come back with ‘The Big C’.

As a parent you never expect to hear ‘The Big C’ word in the same sentence as your child’s name.

If you are faced with that sentence, then you embark on a journey that you have not had time to prepare for or pack for. Many families are separated as the child with ‘The Big C’ is transported to a hospital, often far from home, whilst one parent stays with them, the other tries to keep normality, go to work, travel to the hospital and juggle with the care of additional children at home. The stress it adds to all families is enormous, wide spread, yet unmeasurable as it grows rapidly, it’s also instant.

Sophie was 10 when she was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL) cancer of the blood.  She was about to be stripped of 2 and a half years of her childhood as she endured, needles, bone marrow biopsies and a gruesome intensive course of chemotherapy.  8 months of intensive constant chemotherapy several times a week, sometimes as many as 5.  This included lumber punctures, where chemotherapy is injected into her spine as a preventative measure to try and stop the cancer cells in her blood travelling to her brain. The 8 months of intensive treatment was followed by a programmed maintenance treatment that would last 19 months, and included regular chemotherapy intravenously, oral chemotherapy daily and more lumber punctures.

The effects you cannot comprehend unless you have to live the nightmare – watching your bouncy blue eyed, blonde haired 10 year old full of life have the life drained from her not only through the leukaemia itself, but the added trauma to her little body of all the drugs and chemotherapy. Having to tell her that the hair she treasured was all going to fall out. Then whilst you brushed her hair because she couldn’t bare to and listening to her sob as she felt it coming out, having to hide the clumps of hair so she didn’t have see it and doing this all through blurry eyes because you were sobbing too.

Watching her little body, rapidly change shape, as she put on a vast amount of weight because of steroids and constant mood changes with many nights lying awake and asking ‘Why has this happened to me? What have I done? (The same question I asked of myself). As a side effect of the steroids Sophie now has Osteonecrosis in her joints, she suffers from pains in her ankles, knees and elbows. Some side effects from treatment are short term but many children will suffer with side effects for the rest of her lives. Sophie’s Osteonecrosis will most certainly be with her for life.

As hard as it has been, we needed to go through this to get to where we are today and get the result that every parent who has ever been in our situation wants.

Sophie was a smiley energetic 10 year old before diagnosis and has had to give up activities she loved, like trampolining and gymnastics were she was reaching competitive stages. She still manages gymnastics some weeks, but can only do balancing and muscle toning exercises as she’s not allowed any impact activities to her joints.

Despite all this Sophie has been an inspiration, we are very proud of her and she still keeps on smiling and lighting up any room she’s in.

We consider ourselves very lucky, we have had fantastic support and we know that Sophie is loved by everyone she comes into contact with and more importantly we are lucky because Sophie has survived ‘The Big C’.

Today 10 more children and their families will be told the devastating news that they have ‘The Big C’, the fact is that some of them will be lucky like us and sadly some won’t be, that’s something I can’t comprehend.

CLIC-Sargent will be there for those families as they have been for us and will be there for them and us after treatment finishes.

The time for us to take a sigh of relief is approaching... although I’m not naive enough to think it ends on 25 February, as we need to concentrate on building Sophie’s confidence and strength. But a sigh of relief will be had. And yes every time she sneezes I will have her down to the Doctors before I can say ‘bless you’.

I ask you all to ‘Have a Little Heart’ this February in support of Sophie as she nears the end of treatment and to help CLIC-Sargent to continue their work for the 10 families that have had to embark on their journey today, and the 10 that embarked yesterday and the 10 tomorrow.

It couldn’t be simpler, donate on this page or simply text GHRT50 and put the amount you want to donate (denominations for text donations are £1, £2, £3, £4, £5 or £10).

Thank you from Sophie's Mum x

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