Frankie's story

It started with just a limp

I want to tell you something about an amazing young boy who came into my life 5 weeks early, but was taken away by this horrible disease osteosarcoma, far too young.

He was the quietest little boy but was as strong as an ox. He liked fast cars, money, trainers, football and was nicknamed Frank the tank by his rugby coach. A typical boy.

He started limping when he was 9 and was told by 4 different doctors that it was ligament damage. Prior to this, Frankie was swimming and diving in a swimming pool, still playing rugby and football, with no symptoms of it being anywhere else other than limping on one leg, hence the name Frank the tank.

The diagnosis

To cut a long story short. I eventually took him to A&E where, with a simple x-ray, my son was diagnosed. It had broken his knee cap in half and spread round his little body, both knees and lungs.

My son took everything that stood in his path, from MRI scans, a bionic leg, the lower lobe of his lung being removed to eventually too many brain tumours to count.

This shouldn’t be happening to children and in the 2 years of living and breathing cancer with my son, I also watched 6 other children die from this awful disease, one of them was Frankie’s girlfriend, which he met at the hospital.

My best friend and my life

Last year we celebrated what would have been his 12th birthday without him. He was my world, my hero, my best friend and my life. Cancer has changed us all, but it made my son the hero he was and still is, in my eyes, today.