HER name is Faith - and that is exactly what her family have had in her recovery.

 

The seven-year-old was diagnosed with cancer at just nine weeks old and has endured a lifetime of treatment for the disease.

But now Faith is a bright and lively schoolgirl who is finally keeping up with her peers.

Mum Natalie Marshall said: "We had a really hard time or it and it's been a long road for Faith, being diagnosed as a new baby.

"You would never know it now, though.

"Now, she's a happy, bright little girl. Nothing gets past Faith."

When Faith was nine weeks old her mum was worried that she wasn't feeding properly and asked her GP to check her over.

Natalie thought she was just being an anxious new mum - but the reality turned she and husband Steven's lives upside down.

The 32-year-old said: ""I was quite a young mum and a new mum. One day Faith wouldn't take her bottle and kept being sick so I called the local surgery and they told me to bring her up to see a locum doctor.

"He felt her stomach and immediately told me to take her to Raigmore, which is about two hours away, so I knew it was something serious.

"We were rushed up to the hospital still not knowing what was going on. We were then transferred down to Yorkhill to the Schiehallion ward.

"I had never even heard of neuroblastoma before."

Faith had cancer of the nervous system, affecting the adrenal glands in her stomach and giving her tumours around her body.

Natalie, a pupil support assistant, added: "After two weeks of tests we found out it was stage one and were allowed to take Faith home for Christmas before coming back to Yorkhill again.

"Faith was by far the smallest on the ward.

"At three months she had major surgery. She was tiny, only 9lbs, and she had a tumour in her abdomen the size of a baked potato.

"During the operation surgeons cut through a nerve to her leg that left her unable to straighten her left foot."

The family, then living in Thurso, were unable to make trips up and down from home to the hospital.

So Natalie stayed in CLIC Sargent's Cruachan House, a Home from Home.

Natalie said: "The Home from Home was just a blessing. At the time, we were living in Thurso, which was a six hour journey away.

"Faith was in the Schiehallion ward and so I was allowed to stay overnight with her but my husband couldn't.

"At a time like that you need your husband there for support and Faith needed her dad so Steven got to stay in Cruachan House.

"We even would swap sometimes so he would stay on the ward with Faith and I would get to grab some sleep in the Home from Home.

"If there were any weekends where we were exhausted and couldn't drive up the road then Faith would come and stay with us in Cruachan House and we could all be together.

"It gave us a sense of normality at a very stressful, difficult time.

"It can do funny things to you, being in a hospital 24/7 so it was really, really good Steven could be there and we could be together as a family."

CLIC Sargent now needs to raise £700,000 out of the £1.4million cost of building a new Home from Home.

The current Cruachan House at Yorkhill must move when the children's hospital moves to the new Southern General Hospital Campus.

Natalie added: "People had families of three and four staying in the house so I can imagine how important it would be to have all your family together if there were siblings as well.

"You had your own bedroom but there would be communal kitchens and dining areas so you could chat to other families about what they were going through and give each other support. That helped too.

"The staff were really nice. They made sure you had everything you needed but they left you to it. There was no pressure to talk if you didn't want to.

"Whatever you needed, they would do anything for you, even if that was just to give you your peace.

"We were there for two months and then were back and forward and we couldn't have done it without CLIC Sargent."

At the moment Faith, who is now a big sister to three-year-old Logan, is monitored by doctors and is not having any treatment, in the hope the tumours will shrink by themselves.

She returns once a year to Yorkhill for a meeting with her consultant - as her mum jokes, "an annual reunion".

She has had seven major operations, most of them on her leg after a nerve was severed during an operation on her stomach.

Natalie added: "The leg condition has been almost as traumatic as the cancer. She was delayed in her walking and has had to have several major operations to repair the damage.

"But she's much better now and on her feet.

"I don't know what we would have done without CLIC Sargent and their support. I know what a great charity it is and we had a lot of help from them.

"If Cruachan House wasn't there I dread to think what would happen, that families could not be together at such terrible times."