Boy who suffered chronic tummy pains given '5 per cent chance of survival'
24.07.2022 - 13:21
/ dailyrecord.co.uk
A boy's stomach pains which led to cancer have left him with just a five per cent chance of survival - leaving his family devastated.
Tyler Lynch was five-years-old when he began complaining of pain in his tummy in May 2020. When he woke up with a limp and sore leg months later, mum and dad Danie and Maria rushed the tot to hospital.
Medics told his parents that Tyler was suffering from irritable hip, which is fairly common in children. But the following day, when Tyler’s eye began to swell, his parents knew it was something more serious.
“He woke up and it looked like his left eye started to close,” Daniel, 34, told the Manchester Evening News. “Doctors looked at him again and got him to walk. They asked how long he had been walking like that.
“A blood test found inflammation and then they did an MRI scan and we were told he had a tumour in his stomach and that it was cancer – it only got worse from there.”
Tyler, from Sale, was tragically diagnosed with Stage 4 Neuroblastoma, a cancer that is almost always found in children. The rare cancer develops from the cells left behind from a baby’s development in the womb.
Neuroblastoma affects around 100 children each year in the UK, about 6 per cent of the total number of childhood cancer diagnoses. Tyler was placed on an intensive chemotherapy plan for 12 weeks before having a stem cell harvest and two tumours and five lymph nodes removed.
Surgery went well and Tyler, now aged seven, recovered quickly. He then had another round of aggressive chemotherapy which led to an extremely low immune system, meaning he had to stay in an isolated room for six weeks.
The treatment meant Tyler’s weight dropped substantially and he developed painful sores in his mouth, leaving him unable to