Todder's teething pain turns out to be cancer

May 18 2008 By Lesley Roberts

LITTLE Rebecca Foley's parents thought she was suffering from teething pains.

Mum Kerry even felt a bit of a fraud as she watched her lively, smiling baby being tested for viral infection in hospital.

So six days later, when doctors finally gave Kerry and husband Paul the devastating diagnosis, it hit them like a thunderbolt.

Seven-month-old Rebecca had acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), a particularly aggressive form of the deadly disease. She would need chemotherapy immediately.

For Kerry, 27, who is a theatre nurse at Inverclyde Royal, the news was almost unbearable.

She said: "I heard the word 'leukaemia' and thought that was it. We were going to lose her.

"Yet Rebecca seemed fine. She was bouncing up and down in her cot like there was nothing wrong.

"I even asked if they could have got the results mixed up because I couldn't see how she could be so active if she was so ill.

"I was physically sick every day for two weeks after her diagnosis."

To see Rebecca now, aged 16 months, playing in her garden in Greenock, it's hard to believe she only finished her gruelling treatment in January.

She spent months in isolation at Glasgow's Yorkhill Hospital.

Kerry said: "It was heartbreaking when the chemo made her lovely dark hair fall out.

"I started cutting off little curls as keepsakes before she lost it all. "Even her eyelashes fell out."

Rebecca also had at least 12 blood transfusions but the treatment finally worked.

She is now in remission and while Kerry and IT worker Paul are too cautious to claim that she is cured, they're determined to try to get family life back to normal.

Kerry said: "At our worst times, sitting in Yorkhill's Schiehallion ward for children with cancer, I couldn't have imagined being out playing in the garden with her.

"I watch her with her sister Erin and can't get my mind around what we've all been through.

"I'm so aware there are other families and I want to show them there is hope. I cried with joy whenever I saw a child walking out that ward after treatment. It always gave me a boost.

"Look at the progress there's been and breakthroughs in treatment are happening all the time."

Kerry and Paul have already raised more than s3000 for Leukaemia Research and they are delighted the cash will be used to help fund the Paul O'Gorman centre.

Rebecca had AML but it is believed that research into CML at the new Glasgow base will benefit children like her.

Kerry said: "We're far from the end of our journey but we will do anything to give other parents hope. Because there is hope."