My brave little boy vowed he’d fight so I wouldn’t lose him to cancer like his dad...
WHEN Rachael Stiles lost her husband to cancer she was left devastated – then fate dealt her another hammer blow.
Her 10-year-old son was also diagnosed with the disease and she was terrified she would lose him too.
But brave Tom promised he would not leave her and would fight it – and now he has been given a clean bill of health.
Rachael, 46, from Liverpool, said: “Tom certainly kept his promise to me.
“I’m so relieved cancer didn’t take my son from me, as well as my husband.”
Husband Rich, then 28, was diagnosed with non-hodgkin’s lymphoma – a cancer of the blood – just two weeks before their wedding day in December 2002.
The devastated couple were determined to get married, so two weeks later they stood and exchanged their vows.
Rachael said: “It was a bittersweet wedding day. It was wonderful to become man and wife, but we didn’t know what the future was going to hold and whether we would spend a long life together.
“After our wedding we couldn’t go on honeymoon to Mexico as planned.
“Rich had to go straight to hospital and start six months of intensive chemotherapy instead. It was aggressive and left him exhausted – and he lost his hair.”
‘It was just horrible bad luck’
Rich was given the all clear 18 months later. Against the odds Rachael became pregnant just after he started treatment.
She gave birth to son Louis, now 19, and five years later Tom arrived.
She said: “We felt so lucky that we had our family and Rich had recovered too.
“The doctors had said it was a miracle I’d been able to fall pregnant after Rich’s chemotherapy as it was likely that it would have left him infertile. It felt like we could finally put everything behind us.”
But then in June, 2009, when Tom was two, Rich started getting stomach pains and tests showed something devastating.
He had an incredibly rare form of stomach cancer that had started in his appendix and had attached to his small bowel.
It was unrelated to the previous cancer – just incredibly unlucky. Rachael said: “The consultant told us it was horrible bad luck. They told us it wasn’t treatable either.
“Rich had just been given a death sentence after everything we’d been through.
“It was a slow-growing cancer, but after 18 months he started getting really poorly, and a year later lost his fight for life.”
She said: “I had to concentrate on helping the boys through it.they were just five and 10 and devastated without their dad.”
Rachael recalled: “I never thought it would happened again, but then when Tom was 10 we were told he was now facing the same battle as his daddy.
“He also had non-hodgkin’s lymphoma, like Rich had, but it was a different type.”
She went on: “The doctors asked if I had understood what they were telling me.
“I wanted to scream that yes I did, that I’d been told the same thing twice before.”
Tom underwent three-and-a-half years of treatment at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool.
Rachael said: “He reacted really badly to the chemotherapy. He had blood clots in his lungs, and battled pancreatitis too.
“But he was so determined to survive. He kept promising me that it wasn’t going to beat him. I was so proud of him.”
Tom, now 14, finished his treatment and rang the end-of-treatment bell at Alder Hey last summer. He is now back to full strength and has returned to school.
Rachael said: “Hopefully we can put it behind us now. I’m so thankful I didn’t lose my son to cancer as well as my husband.”