International Childhood Cancer Day: Leighton's Story
Today (15 February) is International Childhood Cancer Day and we wanted to share the inspirational story of 3-year-old Leighton Tabbott, a patient on Ward 18 at our Birmingham Children's Hospital.
We spoke to Leighton's mum, Vicky, who told us his story. She said: "It all started when Leighton was 14 months old, he woke up one morning and his eyes went into the corner, we took him to the GP who said it might be a squint and he was referred to the opticians and started having eye tests.
"A couple of weeks after that, he started tilting his neck and losing his balance when learning to walk.
"The doctors said he was just a slow developer, however at the end of June last year he started losing his balance when crawling and would fall onto the floor, I knew it wasn't right and took him to the hospital.
"He had an MRI scan and the next day we found out he had a brain tumour. On 6 July he had an operation for 11 hours where all of the tumour was removed, but unfortunately, the tests came back to say it was cancer.
"Leighton is now 6 months into his chemotherapy treatment, he has to undergo 40 rounds and he is going in this week for his 11th round. He is doing really well and coping so well with the treatment.
"Until you are in this situation, you don't realise how many kids have cancer, it is really shocking. The team at the Children's Hospital are fantastic, the ward, physio staff, nurses and consultants are all brilliant, if it weren't for them he wouldn't be here today and I can't thank them enough."