A mum has said she felt her heart had 'broken into pieces' when she discovered her 10-year-old son's blocked nose was in fact a malignant brain tumour.
Just three weeks after Lucca Larkin's birthday in August, his parents' 'world came crashing down' as a scan revealed a brain tumour, after his 'sinus headaches ' wouldn't go away.
The little boy from Radcliffe, Manchester, was rushed to Royal Manchester Children's Hospital where doctors operated to remove most of the tumour at the back of his head.
Tests revealed the tumour was Medulloblastoma - the most common malignant brain tumour in children.
The schoolboy is now on the waiting list for a form of radiotherapy at the Christie Hospital in Manchester to remove part of the tumour that was too risky to take out surgically.
But his mum Shellie, 40, is now speaking out to warn other parents to 'trust their instincts' if they know something isn't right.
Shellie said: "It's hard to describe the feeling you have when you hear the news that what you thought were sinus headaches or migraines is actually something much more sinister.
"People use the term heartbroken but upon hearing the news I felt like my heart had broken into pieces. It was like a physical pain deep inside.
"I felt scared - terrified in fact. And later I felt and intense anger that this horrible disease even exists.
"As a parent it's the worst feeling, you feel like you've died inside when you hear your child has that kind of disease.
"When your child is poorly you know that you do everything for them but I knew there was nothing I was going to be able to do at that point to help him. It's a very helpless feeling."
Now the family is anxiously awaiting the results from a lumbar puncture operation to assess whether the tumour had spread to his spine.
They are now waiting to hear if Lucca will need to have proton beam therapy - a type of radiotherapy often used to treat children - in Germany, where they could be for more than six weeks.
Lucca, who loves playing football and watching rugby, has a tight bond with his siblings Rhiannon, 21, Antonia, 16, Reuben, 15 and Roman, 8.
Shellie said: "He's doing brilliantly. He's still very upbeat. He's a quiet little boy but we're a very close family. He's very close to his brothers and sister.
"[After the operation] we were sat in the garden area at the hospital and my husband Simon and I left him with Roman and Antonia. They were just talking and you could see the tension drain from his body.
"But he was so strong during all of this. He hasn't complained once or moaned about his situation. He's said he's had a headache and he's in pain but he's never complained.
"Every single day he improved more and more but that's because he wanted to. He wanted to be back being him.
"How could I break down or sit there and feel sorry for myself when he wasn't? He gave me this strength that I honestly didn't know I had."
In a cruel twist of fate, Lucca was diagnosed with Medulloblastoma two days after Simon left his job in operations and planning for a utility company to start building his own business.
Shellie said the new company can't happen now and no one else is going to take Simon on if he needs to be away in Germany for six weeks or more.
As a solution the couple have started a Go Fund Me page to help them financially.
Shellie said: "It was just the worst luck, or Sod's law - everything kind of happens together, doesn't it?
"If I'd just left it and thought 'right okay, it is just a sinus infection, we'll go to the doctors' next week when it opens', we might not be in the same situation as we are now.
"But something was telling me deep in my gut that something wasn't right, that there was something other than what they'd already said and that we had to push for it."
