All clear! Brave Daniel is back at home
ABRAVE boy whose mum spotted a Facebook post listing his uncharacteristic behaviour as brain tumour symptoms has been given the allclear from cancer.
Daniel Bell, from Ormskirk, was just three years-old when he was diagnosed with pilocytic astrocytoma, one of the most common brain tumours diagnosed in the UK.
He appeared to be a very normal child, with his mum Rosie describing him as a “chilled-out, easygoing lad, who was always full of beans.”
But in 2014, Rosie began noticing some strange changes in his personality. She said: “Daniel started having tantrums out of the blue. Proper meltdowns about really insignificant things.
“Friends said that it was just the usual terrible twos, but something didn’t feel right about it. He’d be inconsolable and that just wasn’t Daniel.
“Then he started wetting the bed for the first time and seemed to be poorly all the time – he’d catch every bug going. It just didn’t add up.”
It wasn’t until a family holiday to Northumberland that Rosie noticed the true extent of Daniel’s escalating odd behaviour.
She said: “Daniel wanted to sleep all the time. He was constantly tired and lethargic and we ended up pushing him round in his buggy the whole time, because he didn’t want to walk, It was so out of character.
“Then the real warning sign was when he began waking up in the morning and being sick almost immediately. We knew it wasn’t a virus, because he had no temperature or other symptoms.”
After they came home, Daniel’s behaviour and symptoms continued – but then Rosie had a “lightbulb moment”.
She said: “A friend’s son had been diagnosed with a brain tumour about a year before and I suddenly remembered the HeadSmart card she’d shared on Facebook with all the symptoms.
“One of the symptoms was being sick all the time, and it was like a lightbulb going off in my brain. It all fitted together. I took Daniel to the doctor, who listened carefully to my concerns.”
But when Rosie visited the GP, she was told that Daniel might have hayfever as he was constantly rubbing his eyes.
She left the surgery with a prescription of anti-histamines and was told to come back in a week if things didn’t improve.
As things continued, Rosie returned the following week, where a different doctor noticed a new symptom in Daniel - he was holding his hands behind his head, no matter if he was sitting down or standing.
Rosie said: “The doctor referred Daniel for an MRI, and said that would take about two days. But I decided I couldn’t wait. The next morning at about 8.30am, I took Daniel straight to A&E in Ormskirk.
“I explained all his symptoms, but I left out the part about waiting for an MRI referral, because I didn’t want to come across as a hysterical mum. “The medical staff confirmed what I’d suspected, though, and by 11am he was in the CT scanner. As soon as they’d done the scan, they realised how severe everything was.”
Daniel was put straight into an ambulance and immediately rushed to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.
He and his mum arrived at 12.30pm and Daniel was in surgery by 3pm for the first life-saving procedure to release the pressure on his brain.
After the threehour operation, a consultant came to Rosie and told her they’d have to operate on Daniel the next day.
She said: “He said it couldn’t wait, because the tumour was still pressing on Daniel’s brain.”
Daniel was diagnosed with pilocytic astrocytoma, one of the most common brain tumours diagnosed in the UK.
Rosie continued: “Mr Mallucci said that although the tumour was large – about the size of an adult’s fist – it was a low-grade tumour and that he was confident he could remove it all.”
The following day, as planned, the tumour was removed during a nine-hour operation.
Rosie said: “We were so lucky he was at Alder Hey, the theatre has something called an intraoperative MRI scanner, so they were able to scan Daniel’s brain during surgery and they spotted a bit they’d missed.
“This meant they removed the whole tumour in one operation, without needing to go back in.”
Now, almost five years later, Daniel is eight-years-old and has recently started junior school and is back to his normal self.
Rosie said: “He’s now really into maths at school – I don’t know where that’s come from in the family!
“But I also knows just how lucky we’ve been. After the operation, Mr Mallucci told me that if I hadn’t seen that HeadSmart card, Daniel would have most likely died in his sleep one night.
“I’m now good friends with Katie – the woman who shared that card. She’s obviously so happy too.
“When she shared the HeadSmart campaign, she always hoped it would be worthwhile, so for her to know that it saved Daniel’s life is amazing.
“I now do the same as Katie did back in 2014. I make sure all the nurseries and schools in Ormskirk have HeadSmart cards available. Someone told me the other day she’d seen a card stuck to the fridge in a friend’s kitchen, so I know they’re getting out there.
“It’s something I’ve tried to get out there, but you really hope you never have to think about it.”