A girl who kept coming home with bruises on her legs that parents thought were from fighting at school was given a devastating diagnosis.
On a hot July afternoon, little Eva arrived home with leg bruises and said she had no idea where she had got them from. While mum and dad Scott and Katrina Thornley wondered if she'd been getting into tussles at school, they noticed over time that the bruises were not fading.
They decided to take Eva for blood tests 0 and the outcome changed their lives forever, as doctors told them Eva had not been brawling - but had contracted leukaemia.
Scott, 40 told the Manchester Evening News : “It’s like your whole world crumbles. All the worst possible scenarios were going through my mind.
“You just assume the worst straight away as a parent. I felt grief to be honest; it didn’t look like it was affecting me but inside it killed me.
“Her sister recently went for a blood test and found out she had a vitamin D deficiency, so we thought it might have been a lack of vitamin D.
"We asked how she got the bruises but she didn’t know. We thought they were from having a fight in school.
"We didn’t think at all, not even in the slightest, that we would go to hospital and it would be leukaemia.”
Eva, from Tyldesley, Greater Manchester, was immediately transferred to Manchester Children’s Hospital following her diagnosis.
She was placed on a 10-day chemotherapy course due to the aggressiveness of her cancer.
The intense treatment meant she lost all of her hair, but despite her diagnosis, her family say she is “still smiling and happy,” after celebrating her 10th birthday.
Window cleaner Scott said before her birthday: "We’re going to spoil her.
“The kids on the ward are so happy and they just get on with it.
"They’re not like adults. Eva’s hair has fallen out now because of the chemo, but if you met her and spoke to her, you wouldn’t think anything was wrong with her.
“When we got tested, they rang us at 10.30pm at night and said we needed to get to hospital straight away and alarm bells started to ring then. That’s how serious it was.
“They warned us that when you walk onto the ward, you see kids with no hair, and it hit us like a ton of bricks. You don’t get sent there for no reason.”
Though Eva celebrated her birthday on the children’s ward, her family are hopeful she can return home for a couple of weeks in between treatments.
“Knowing your child has to go through what she’s gone through... all we have is positivity,” Scott added.
“That’s all we’ve got. There’s nothing whatsoever I can do to help my child. It’s an aggressive cancer so we’ve got the treat it aggressively.
“She had 10 days of chemotherapy, it’s a lot for a child to take. Even after 10 days she’s still smiling and happy. It’s just a horrible situation, but it makes me proud to be her dad.”
Eva’s sister Lily, 14, has since set up a Gofundme appeal to raise cash for every child on Eva’s ward.
She held a charity walk around Tyldesley and has so far managed to raise almost £1,000.
The teenager hopes the cash can go towards buying them a new toy, sweets or a game.
