A mother has revealed that she thought her daughter was just clumsy, but was shocked to know she was suffering from a brain tumor.
Her teacher even nicknamed her ‘Little Miss Bump.’
Shelley Dunlop, 30, from Dorset, told how she stopped trying to teach her daughter Annabelle Ginn how to ride a bike as she kept falling off it.
‘We did our best to get her on a bike but we got nowhere as her balance was just so bad,’ she explained. ‘She couldn’t even ride a scooter without falling off so we gave up on both.
‘And from as long as I can remember, Annabelle has been incredibly clumsy. She was always tripping – she’d manage to stumble over nothing on a flat floor.’
She continued: ‘It got worse when she started school and she’d come home with an accident form most days.
‘One teacher nicknamed her Little Miss Bump and another suggested we get her tested for dyspraxia, which was on my to-do list.
‘She’s always been a bubbly, chatty, happy little girl and we didn’t think anything of it – we just thought she was a clumsy kid.’
When Annabelle, was six years old, she fell out of her cabin bed. Soon, she complained about excruciating headaches and vomiting. Her scanning report revealed a tennis-ball-sized brain tumor.
Doctors told the mother that it had been growing for years, so Annabelle facing balance problems.
‘Thank goodness Annabelle fell out of bed – I’m convinced it saved her life as it led to her diagnosis,’ said Shelley, who works as a health care assistant.
‘You hear the words, “your child has a brain tumor” and you just can’t take it in.
‘It was surreal and I couldn’t register this was happening to my little girl – it felt like I was watching a TV show.
‘All the time we’d thought she was just clumsy, she was walking around with a ticking time bomb inside her head.’
She went for a 10-hour operation to remove the tumor. Annabelle was in the hospital for a month to learn how to walk and talk again.
She shared her story through The Brain Tumour Charity to support its HeadSmart campaign to raise awareness of children’s brain tumors.
‘We didn’t have a clue that poor balance was a possible symptom of a brain tumor,’ explained Shelley.
‘If we had, Annabelle would probably have been diagnosed earlier and her tumor wouldn’t have grown so big and caused as much damage.’
The family’s nightmare started on April 9 when Shelley and her partner Troy, 31, were downstairs when they heard a crash from Annabelle’s bedroom around 7 pm.
‘We ran into Annabelle’s room and she was on the floor holding her head,’ explained Shelley. ‘She said she’d hit it when she fell out of bed trying to shut her blinds.
‘We checked her over for bumps and cuts and she said she was OK, so I gave her a cuddle and tucked her back in bed.’
One morning, Annabelle woke up with a headache and vomited again, so her mother took her to The Royal Bournemouth Hospital where she works.
‘She was under observation and a doctor said she had a concussion and was going to send her home with Calpol,’ she explained. ‘Then Annabelle had a headache and they saw for themselves how much pain she was in.’
‘By then, I was by myself as Troy had to go back to work,’ recalled Shelley. ‘As soon as a nurse asked me to go into another room, I knew something was seriously wrong. Doctors told me that Annabelle had a large tumor near her brain stem.’
‘They said she had to be transferred immediately to University Southampton Hospital’s pediatric neurology department for a more detailed MRI scan.
‘I’d been convinced they were going to say she had a concussion and send me home with an information leaflet – not turn our world upside down in seconds.
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