Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF PRIDE OF BRITAIN
JO Adamou clutched her daughter Cissy’s hand as the doctor walked in. When he told her “You have a brain tumour”, Jo broke down.
“But as usual, Cissy broke the tension,” she smiles.
“She asked if this meant she could stop reading Jane Eyre, the school book she’d brought to Turkey.”
The family had been on holiday when 15-year-old Cissy became unwell.
“I thought, ‘Why Cissy? She’s been through so much’,” remembers Jo.
Cissy had been diagnosed with a heart condition in the womb. She’d had open-heart surgery aged two, and needed two more heart operations seven years later before her parents were warned that only a transplant could save her.
Cissy had the operation at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital, only by then her kidneys were failing. So Jo donated her kidney and life slowly returned to normal.
The brain tumour was another devastating blow for Cissy.
She also had tumours on her spine but, before she lost her hair through treatment, she decided to donate her locks to The Little Princess Trust, which provides wigs to children who’ve lost their hair for medical reasons.
Two friends joined her in a sponsored head shave, and they raised £13,000 for the Freeman Hospital and Evelina Children’s Hospital.
Cissy was named Teenager of Courage at the Pride of Britain Awards in 2014.
“It was lovely to have something positive after everything,” Jo says.
Cissy is now 19 and studying Journalism at Newcastle University.