Boy, 6, with a swollen cheek from ‘toothache’ had cancer
BUT for a swelling in his cheek, Dylan Williams appeared a ‘healthy and robust’ child who loved to run around with his friends like any other six-year-old.
Believing he was suffering nothing more serious than a tooth abscess, his mother Siobhan O’Flynn took her little boy to see a dentist.
This did not provide any answers until at Christmas the family was finally confronted with the terrible truth – Dylan was at risk of imminent death as a rare cancer rapidly enveloped his entire body.
Doctors had investigated a number of possible conditions, including mumps, but it took an X-ray to reveal he had stage 4 Bcell lymphoblastic lymphoma, which affects just 11 people in every million.
Dylan’s condition was so serious doctors were stunned he was still alive and believe he would have died had his diagnosis been delayed even by a couple of days.
He was immediately put on a course of chemotherapy and continues to have it 18 months later – helping to reduce the tumours. Despite all he has been through, Dylan is now back at school, able to ride on his bike and play with his friends.
And while his long-term prognosis is unknown, his mother Miss O’Flynn hailed the NHS’s ‘incredible’ work which has allowed him to keep fighting. ‘From the moment he had his first scan those medics came out, all guns blazing, saying “We’re going to sort this out”,’ she said.
Describing the extent of the disease, Miss O’Flynn, 44, said: ‘Tumours were pushing out his eye, wrapping around his brain, spine, shoulder blades, ribs and kidneys. No one could believe that he survived – he was riddled with tumours. Even his central nervous system was infiltrated.
‘I am forever grateful to the NHS for catching it when they did.’ Dylan, now seven, was a ‘healthy and robust’ boy when the swelling appeared on his face. A locum doctor at his local surgery in Cardiff thought it might be mumps.
But Miss Flynn, a mother of two who lives with her partner Nick Williams, 48, was not convinced and took him to the dentist a couple of times, thinking it might be an abscess. Then one night, Dylan woke up from the pain and was taken to A&E, where he was given drugs for a suspected allergy.
The swelling remained, however, and another GP referred him to a dental clinic for an X-ray and ultrasound. Miss O’Flynn told Mirror.co.uk how the X-ray revealed an ‘enormous mass’ in Dylan’s head about which doctors were ‘gravely concerned’. Five days later, on Christmas Eve 2016,
‘He was riddled with tumours’
further tests revealed Dylan condition. Usually his form of cancer affects only the lymph nodes but Dylan’s had developed outside, with tumours on his head and torso. This happens to just a quar- ter of those with B-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma.
The chemotherapy made Dylan so weak he could barely walk and his hair fell out. After 28 general anaesthetics, 55 rounds of chemotherapy and 20 lumbar punctures, he still needs chemo drug Methotrexate injected into his spine once a month. But it has helped shrink the aggressive tumours and his hair has grown back.
Dylan will probably need to be monitored all his life, may never have children and his heart and nerves have been affected permanently. Miss O’Flynn described an ‘overwhelming helpless’ feeling when seeing your child gravely ill but said: ‘Without the referral from my GP and the fast response of the consultant, he quite simply wouldn’t have made it.’
Since the family’s ordeal began, she has written a blog, www.TheLittleBigC.com, to help her process the trauma, which has helped her realise how many other families have been through the same.
Miss O’Flynn said Dylan’s illness had brought ‘peculiar positives’, adding: ‘It’s brought us even closer as a family and it has made us stronger.’