UK NEWS

MOTHER USES GOOGLE TO FIND GIRL'S TUMOUR

A mother used Google to diagnose her daughter's brain tumour

Tuesday February 9,2010

By Paul Jeeves

A DEVOTED mother used Google to diagnose her daughter’s brain tumour after doubting doctors said the child was simply “attention-seeking”.

Carly Hornbuckle, 25, was certain her little girl Bella was seriously ill when she kept being sick in the mornings and lost weight.

But a GP told her the four-year old was probably playing up because she was “unsettled” after the arrival of baby sister Imogen.

Annoyed by that diagnosis, the determined mother typed the youngster’s symptoms into the internet search engine and discovered they all pointed to a brain tumour.

Her findings eventually prompted experts to take a closer look and a scan revealed a tumour the size of a golf ball. Surgeons removed it in an eight-hour operation and Bella is having chemotherapy to ensure the cancer is completely gone.

The condition she was suffering from, medulloblastoma, affects just 80 children nationwide each year.

Mother-of-two Carly, from Markfield, Leicester, said yesterday: “I knew there was something seriously wrong. You know your own children.”

She turned to the internet and convinced doctors at Leicester Royal Infirmary to examine her daughter but they said she did not have the correct symptoms. Carly said: “Then we saw a different doctor. I told him of my concerns and that something needed to be done.”

After a series of tests, doctors, carried out a scan to “rule out” her mother’s worst fears. It was then the family’s world was “torn apart” as Bella underwent surgery at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, which is being followed by radiotherapy.

Carly said: “The surgery was a success but the radiotherapy has affected Bella’s spine and she will never grow to more than 4ft. It could also lead to some learning difficulty, hearing loss and kidney damage.”

Carly and Bella’s father, Jordan Flint, 28, have set up a charity, Tinkerbella’s Wishes, to help provide for her future care and fund research. So far they have raised around £4,000.

Professor Richard Grundy, the country’s only professor of paediatric neurological oncology, at Queen’s Medical Centre, said: “Bella came to us relatively early. The surgery went extremely well and we were able to get on with her treatment. The earlier it begins, the better.”

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