The mum of a teenager who had stomach bug symptoms has described the pain of finding out he actually has cancer. Linsey Cowell said 13-year-old Bryce had been an active and well child right up until he started to become unwell in mid-April.
The 41-year-old said Bryce experienced a bout of sickness, which mimicked the symptoms associated with norovirus, in the weeks before he was diagnosed with a rare soft tissue cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma. She now wants to raise awareness of the disease which baffled medics, while also thanking the "amazing" doctors and nurses who have helped her son.
Speaking of the day her son first became unwell, she said: "It started off on April 15 when he felt a little bit sick one day, we thought it was norovirus. He was sick over the Saturday evening into Sunday morning and then that went. Following that he was complaining of pain at the top of his leg on his left side. Because he was generally achy and his temperature was high, I gave him painkillers as you're supposed to. Those were the only symptoms he had." You can get more story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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On April 19, Linsey said she took Bryce to the GP because he still had a painful leg and could not put weight on it. The doctor could not find anything serious but they referred him to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital as he looked pale and seemed unwell. On May 4, Linsey said she took Bryce back to the GP because he felt generally unwell again. She said the pain in his leg had gone but he had lost his appetite and appeared to have flu-like symptoms.
"He had lost a bit of weight and he was sleeping quite a lot," she said. "They said they would do some blood tests and we came home. But by 9pm his temperature hit 40. I rang the 111 number and they said I needed to get him [to hospital] or needed to get him an ambulance. A friend took us to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital and they admitted us to casualty. From then they did many scans including x-rays, MRIs, CTs. They couldn't understand what was wrong because there was nothing on the inside that was showing up."
Following more scans, Linsey said doctors found what looked like a bone infection. However, it didn't seem to be responding to the antibiotics Bryce was given. A full-body MRI then revealed an abnormality throughout Bryce's bone marrow which came as a great shock to Linsey.
She said: "He had always been fit and well and he hadn't been in hospital since he was very small. He had never even broken a bone or anything. A week before he fell ill he had been playing football as usual and out all the time with his friends. He literally had no symptoms."
Linsey said blood tests showed there was something wrong with his haemoglobin levels and as a result Bryce was transferred to the Noah's Ark Children's Hospital in Cardiff. While he was there a bone marrow biopsy confirmed his diagnosis, which baffled medics.
Linsey said: "I was told it normally affects under 10-year-olds or adults. They had been looking for an initial tumour where the cancer began but they couldn't find it. If it wasn't for a gene mutation found in the bone marrow, he wouldn't have been diagnosed. They're trained to know what they're looking for and even they were shocked. He genuinely didn't have any signs. By the time they found it the cancer was intensively through his bone marrow."
As doctors continued to search for the initial tumour which spread into Bryce's bone marrow, Linsey said PET scan results showed a small lump on his wrist, which was not otherwise visible. Over the next few months, Bryce will undergo intensive chemotherapy, before further scans to assess whether his bone marrow has improved.
Linsey said her son's handling of his diagnosis was inspirational to her. She said: "When he found out he was very quiet and he got a bit upset, but one of the first things he said to me was, 'are you okay mum?'. He's an inspiration to me. He's not giving in and is determined he wants to go into the army when he is 18. He is currently going through chemo and losing his hair, but he said he was not going to let cancer make his hair fall into his food so he decided to shave it off himself. He doesn't understand how brave he is."
She described how painful it was for her to watch her son go through such gruelling treatment, but that his positivity was getting her through it. "I go through stages of thinking: 'Why is it my son? Why now?', but mostly I am still numb. It's one of the hardest things as a mother, especially as he is my youngest child and my only little boy. It's soul destroying to watch him ill and crying and there is nothing I can do to help him, but he is coping amazingly. I don't understand how he is so positive even when he's not having a good day."
Linsey - who has three other daughters - said that since Bryce's diagnosis, she hadn't left his side. To give Linsey some extra support a friend set up a GoFundMe page which has so far raised £1,195. You can support the page here. Bryce's school, Treorchy Comprehensive, is also raising money to thank Noah's Ark Children's Hospital for looking after him.
Linsey said she was in awe at how amazing staff at both the Royal Glamorgan and Noah's Ark hospitals had been throughout her son's illness. She said: "Everyone on the ward at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital was amazing, they made it feel like a home from home. When you're at Noah's Ark the staff were amazing too. I told them I can't wait to go home but I will miss them a lot.
"It's comfortable and they always ask me if I'm okay even though I'm not the patient. It's hard enough looking after one sick child, but they are doing this all day, every day looking after lots of sick children. They are always happy and smiley and I just thought, 'wow', they really do go above and beyond."
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