In 2024, parents Anna Chattaway and Dom Wilde were pleading with doctors to do a blood test on their baby girl Florence.
Their one-year old’s belly had ballooned over the course of three weeks, but doctors told them six times over that she was simply constipated.
But Anna and Dom, 32, knew something wasn’t right and were vindicated when their daughter was diagnosed with neuroblastoma in November that year.
Florence’s tumour weighed 2kg, while she weighed just 13kg, meaning it made up nearly 15% of her body weight.
Neuroblastoma is a cancer almost always found in children and it develops from the cells left behind from a baby’s development in the womb. It occurs either in the sympathetic nervous system or closely associated adrenal glands and is usually found in the abdomen.
There are around 100 children diagnosed with it each year in the UK, meaning it’s responsible for about 6% of all childhood cancer diagnoses.
‘Florence was diagnosed a month after her first birthday,’ Anna, a clinical psychologist from Stourbridge, says. ‘There was a period of six weeks beforehand where she was poorly with one thing or another.
‘She picked up infections, she had hand foot and mouth, she had antibiotics but remained off for a while.’
Then her tummy began to swell, so Anna and Dom were back and fourth with their daughter to their local GP.
‘We were told she was constipated at the GP,’ Anna explains. ‘For three weeks I had to force-feed her laxatives which was horrendous.’
The young mum says Florence was crying in pain and was unable to sleep on her own because she was in agony. Anna had to cradle her upright at night to help her get some rest.
‘When her stomach hadn’t gone down, doctors gave her more laxatives, but it was getting bigger,’ she says. ‘She wasn’t right and the laxatives weren’t helping so we had to keep pushing the doctors.’
But despite the parents’ growing concerns, doctors dismissed them. ‘On one occasion a GP said she’s fine and “let’s address the elephant in the room, we don’t think it’s cancer”,’ she adds.
They went to the doctor again for a final time, accompanied by Anna’s mother, who pushed for a blood test.
‘Her bloods were heightened and they referred us to the PAU (paediatric assessment unit) immediately,’ she says. ‘We had another doctor who felt her stomach. As soon as he felt her tummy he said he didn’t think it was poo, there were lumps and bumps.’
Anna says Florence was reassured her symptoms were constipation on at least six occasions in the three weeks before her diagnosis.
‘When the tumour was discovered it was 30cm, which was heart-breaking,’ she recalls. ‘She’s only small so that took up quite a lot of her.’
Florence underwent surgery at Birmingham Children’s Hospital on November 26, 2024 and started emergency chemotherapy the very next day.
Anna adds: ‘She had three months of induction chemotherapy to try and shrink the tumour. They thought the disease was in one place, in her stomach, they assumed it was localised.’
Sadly, further scans in January 2025 revealed Florence had metastatic, or stage 4 cancer, which happens when cells break away from the main tumour. In this case the disease spread to her spine.
‘We look back now, how did we think she was constipated because her stomach was massive?’ Anna says.
‘It grew rapidly in a few weeks, that’s why we have so much anger because if someone would have seen her the first time we went to the GP we could’ve caught this sooner.’
She had up to 95% of the tumour removed from her spine in March 2025, before beginning her first rounds of high-dose chemo just three weeks later.
Florence began five cycles of immunotherapy in October that year, before her parents were eventually told the tumour had stopped progressing in April 2026.
‘All throughout we were told she was doing great,’ Anna says. ‘Every admission she was full of life throughout it, she was just incredible.
‘We’ve met families along the way who have been pushed back from GP’s and doctors more than what Florence’s has.
‘For us, I do think if she was diagnosed sooner it might have not been that large. We sat in that headspace for many months and it was horrifying. There was a lot of anger there.’
The family are now fundraising £100,000 to pay for anti-relapse treatment (DMFO) no longer offered by the NHS, after the treatment was withdrawn by the manufacturer from standard UK access routes, forcing people to pay for it out of their own pocket.
‘Florence has finished the gold standard NHS treatment, after that you can either watch and wait to see if the cancer comes back, or other families chose to do a relapse prevention treatment, but they aren’t NHS protocol,’ Anna says.
‘We decided we wanted her to have a treatment called DFMO. It came to the UK in 2024 and then it was withdrawn in April, a week before she became eligible to start.’
Despite all she’s faced, Florence has beaten the 50% survival odds of the childhood cancer and her parents are proud.
‘She’s been doing incredibly, she’s such a happy little girl. Life is good at home,’ Anna says.
You can donate to the family’s GoFundMe here, which has already raised £61,000 at the time of publishing.
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