When Christina Harris took her 10-year-old daughter to the doctor after she came home with pain in her rib cage, she never could have believed that she would soon be diagnosed with cancer.
"She was a normal 10-year-old," 47-year-old administrative assistant Christina from Essex tells HELLO! as she sits down with her daughter Skye for this interview. "She was at school full time, really happy, full of energy, dancing, just enjoying life."
When Skye, now 13, complained of the pain after school, initially it was put down to the side effects of anxiety. "We went home, but the pain continued, and she was complaining of the pain in the night, so I knew it definitely wasn't anxiety," Skye's mother, who also has a 15-year-old son named Marley, remembers.
© Christina HarrisShortly after, Christina took Skye to A&E as the pain persisted. An X-ray of Skye's lungs showed a small shadow, which prompted an ultrasound to be conducted. Three doctors agreed that the shadow must be the end of an infection, and so they gave her some antibiotics to take home.
Only two nights passed until it became clear that the antibiotics were not making a difference, and Skye started to develop a fever. "I took her straight back down to A&E and I said, 'Look, there's something wrong, you need to do another X-ray', which they did, and at this point, both her lungs were filled with pneumonia," Christina recalls.
© Christina Harris"We were rushed up to the ward and she started on antibiotics immediately, because she was quite poorly at this time. They ran routine bloods, which showed up with leukaemia. It was a real shock."
Skye receives a diagnosis
At this time, Christina felt in a complete blur. "I left the doctor and walked outside the room and started crying because I just thought, 'Surely not'. I was in denial.
© Christina Harris"The doctor went and came back, which felt like five minutes later, but it might have been an hour. He called me and Skye's dad down into a room, and he said he'd already sent the bloods off to get checked and they had come back with leukaemia blast cells, so it was definitely leukaemia."
© Christina HarrisMeanwhile, Skye was consumed by how unwell she felt. "When my mum told me that it was leukaemia, I wasn't surprised," the teenager says. "I had anxiety about my health anyway. I knew that cancers are some of the worst things you can get, so I assumed that it was something really bad because it was the worst I have ever felt."
Skye is admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital
Skye was transferred from her local hospital to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London a day later by ambulance to commence her cancer treatment. She spent 11 days there, undergoing a pre-chemotherapy treatment before beginning an intense course of chemotherapy that lasted for eight months.
© Christina Harris"As a parent, you can't even work through the fact that you've just been told what is wrong with your child, but let alone everything else that happens soon after," Christina says. "They need to do what they need to do to get her treated immediately."
During this time, the family isolated at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic, trying to minimise the chance of Skye picking up the virus.
Hurdles in Skye's treatment
"We were pretty much isolating the two of us, and then would have nurses come and go, and we were going up to Great Ormond Street a couple of times a week and to a local hospital for other chemo," Skye's mother remembers.
© Christina HarrisSkye's treatment wasn't without its hurdles, with her contracting an infection that saw her admitted to the hospital for 26 days. "She had lots of infections, blood infections, lots of side effects of chemo, which most of the time is what she ended up in the hospital for," Christina tells us.
"She got an infection in one of her big toes pretty much straight away, and so she was admitted to our local hospital. They couldn't get it under control after a week, so we were moved to Great Ormond Street, back to the elephant ward, which is where she went first."
© Christina HarrisAfter a week at GOSH, Skye was moved back to South End hospital before being sent home on strong antibiotics for another six weeks. "It was all summer one year, she missed all of the last week of year 6 and the celebrations. It was pretty scary," Christina says.
Skye receives the all-clear
In March 2022, four months after being diagnosed, Skye was told doctors couldn’t detect any more cancer cells in her body, and after two further years of daily chemotherapy, she finished her treatment.
© Christina HarrisThough Skye underwent a gruelling course of treatment, it is the kind staff, including the Play team, which is funded by Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity (GOSH Charity), she remembers fondly.
"I enjoyed being in the hospital because I got to know all the nurses and it was really always nice to chat to them," Skye tells us. "They are so kind, and there's also lots of yummy food in the canteen, and we always liked to go to the rooftop garden as well.
© Christina Harris"We always say that GOSH feels like my second home because when we're there, we know we feel really safe."
© Christina HarrisChristina adds: "The nurses are like angels on earth. We've been to a local hospital, and you never really feel quite as safe anywhere else as you do at GOSH."
© Christina HarrisReflecting on her experience, Skye looks forward to the future. "It was quite hard to get back to normality because it was almost three years of isolating and having medicine," she says.
© Christina Harris"I'm doing really well now and am grateful for being healthy. I'm enjoying my life now, and it has definitely made me feel thankful to be alive."
GOSH Charity's Build it. Beat it. appeal is raising £300m to build a new Children's Cancer Centre at GOSH, which will give more children with cancer the best chance possible. To find out more or to donate, visit gosh.org/cancer
