Hannah's Story

Hannah was born on 9th May 2000 at the Leicester General. She was a much longed for first child for us, David and Clare Edwards. After being married for 5 years we were used to doing our own thing but now we had a new boss. Hannah has always been a joy to look after and we love being a family.

Hannah started Nursery School in November 2000 when I returned to work full time. She took to Nursery well and soon had lots of new friends. She has always been a chatterbox and started talking early and has never stopped!!! Nursery helped her develop verbal, numeric and spatial skills as well as her wonderful personality.

Hannah picked up the usual coughs and colds but was never really poorly, she had a strong immune system and avoided chicken pox twice at Nursery and even when Max, our next door neighbour caught it!

We first noticed something not right with Hannah following her 3rd Birthday, she lost her (normally huge) appetite and started waking up in the night in some discomfort. We gave her the usual Neurofen and this seemed to help. However, she was not getting any better and in some respects was getting worse. She had bad tempers and was becoming more withdrawn, not wanting to go to Nursery or do all the things she usually loved doing. Things came to a head during the May bank holiday week-end. It was Max's 3rd Birthday party and Hannah was doing her best to keep up with the other children. However, we noticed she was limping on her right leg and was generally unwell with a temperature and a bad temper. She was obviously in pain and did not want anyone touching her.

We took her to our GP who sent us straight to the Fracture Clinic at the LRI. We thought this would be routine but Hannah was admitted and had an x-ray and blood tests. The tests were inconclusive and we were told Hannah's condition was most likely to be post viral arthritis, which would pass with time, she also had anaemia. However, despite Hannah having iron supplement and painkillers every 4 hours her condition did not improve. We were re-admitted in June and more tests were carried out with the same conclusion – post viral arthritis.

Hannah was having good days and bad during June and as we had a holiday booked we decided to take her. We thought the sunshine and the change of scene would do her good. Off we went to Menorca on 14th June for 7 days. Hannah was still having her painkillers and the dreaded brown iron medicine and again had some good days and some not so good.

Dave painting Hannah's feet to take their minds off things
while waiting for the test results.

July was more up's and downs with outpatient appointments and further blood tests. Finally, I took Hannah back to the GP and begged him to do something as Hannah was suffering. He noticed she had lost a lot of weight and faxed an urgent letter to Mr Swift, her Consultant at the LRI. Later that week I had a call at work from Nursery telling me that Hannah was inconsolable and clutching her hip in pain. I called Mr Swift from work and asked him to see Hannah although we had no appointment. He said we should bring her straight in as her Haemoglobin levels were dangerously low and she would need a blood transfusion.

From then on things were a whirlwind of tests and more tests. We still thought Hannah had some sort of nasty virus until the word tumour was mentioned on Thursday 31st July. The next test was a 24 hour urine analysis which shows whether a tumour is present in the body. This finished at 8am on Saturday 2nd August and we were able to take Hannah home for the week-end. We had to wait until the Monday for the results and we tried to have a “normal” week-end for Hannah's sake.

On Monday 4th August we were given the news we had been dreading. Hannah indeed had a tumour called a Neuroblastoma. It was most likely to be in her abdomen but further tests would have to be carried out to establish where the primary site was, if the cancer had spread to her bone marrow and what stage the tumour's growth was at, they suspected Stage 4.

Our lives have been turned upside down, this sort of thing happens in films or on TV not to ordinary people like us. We felt numb and helpless. I also felt guilty, should I have pushed the Doctors harder earlier on, could I have prevented this happening, why Hannah??

Maddie, Hannah and Lizzie