Day we thought cancer was back

ASHYA’S parents have told for the first time how doctors feared the youngster’s cancer had returned after he had a brain scan in Prague in September 2015.

Brett and Naghmeh King have made the revelation in a new heartrending book – Saving Ashya - telling of their family’s ordeal.

His mum Naghmeh writes: “Ashya went into the machine. He was so brave as always. ‘When will they give us the results?’ Brett asked Iva (Tatounova) from the Proton Therapy as we had some lunch. She said: ‘They would have already run out and told me if there was something wrong’.

“That put my mind at rest, no news meant good news, and why did we have anything to worry about? Every scan had been clear so far.

“But that evening when we met for dinner, as the kids played in a park in the hospital grounds, Iva pulled us away from them. ‘I’ve got the results of the scan’, she said. ‘It doesn’t say Ashya’s got a tumour and it doesn’t say he hasn’t got a tumour. The doctors couldn’t be sure.’.

Squeezed

“It felt like the sky was closing in, my lungs too, threatening to steal the breath from me. What else would be in his head apart from a tumour? My mind started to go into overdrive and deep inside my chest my heart felt squeezed tight. I went to Ashya and scooped him up in my arms. My poor boy, I thought. Please don’t say I would lose him.” Speaking about the scare, Brett said: “I thought, ‘oh no, we haven’t made the right decision’. “I was so down. Thankfully they did more tests and said: ‘No, there’s no tumour’. “It was like someone had taken a two-tonne weight off my back.” Naghmeh added: “Just like that we’d been given our lives back. We could breathe again.” Saving Ashya is available on amazon.co.uk