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A beacon of hope

My brave son will help hundreds of sick kiddies...


Published by: Lisa Bradley and Jean Jollands
Published on: 6 October 2011

One wobbly step after another, my son Ruddi made his way towards me, before toppling to the floor giggling.
‘Well done,' I beamed, tears in my eyes. My one-year-old had just taken his first steps.
We were on a caravan holiday at Primrose Valley, in Filey, North Yorkshire, with my daughters Jade, 23, and Elly, 14, my sister Charlotte, 28, and her husband Peter, 27.
Embarrassed, I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand, but I had good reason to be so happy.
Just over a year earlier, doctors had told me Ruddi not only might never walk, but might not even live...
Our lives turned upside-down when Ruddi was six months.
‘His breathing seems raspy, and he's really sleepy,' I worr ied to my boyfriend Craig Waterworth, 29.
‘I think we'd better get him to hospital,' he worried.
There, doctors discovered Ruddi had urinary retention.
‘He's struggling to go to the toilet, and the toxins are making him sick,' the doctor explained.
‘Will he be okay?' I asked.
‘We need to know what's causing it first,' he told us.
I nodded, holding Ruddi close to me, which was when I realised there was something missing in his arms - his favourite teddy.
Browsing the hospital shop, I spotted a little brown teddy in hospital scrubs. Scooping it up, I hurried back to Ruddi's bed.
But as I got near, I spotted Craig talking to the doctor and he looked worried. ‘He wants to see us in his office,' he told me.
Holding Ruddi's teddy, I sat down.
‘We've found a mass on Ruddi's prostate and bladder,' the doctor began. ‘It's a tumour,' he added. ‘It's cancer.'
I clutched the teddy to my chest. It was as if someone had sucked the air from the room.
‘Ruddi has rhabdomyosarcoma,' he continued. ‘It's a tumour affecting his muscles, and has attacked his prostate and bladder.'
They thought he was the youngest person in the UK to have ever been diagnosed with it.
He'd need chemotherapy, an operation to remove the tumour, then more chemo and radiotherapy.
‘Will he live?' I pleaded.
‘I'm sorry, we can't make any promises,' admitted the doctor.
Rather than crying, though, I found a sudden inner strength.
‘We'll do everything we can to make him better,' I told Craig. ‘Our boy needs us, we can't crumble.' I couldn't bring myself to break the news to Elly, I left that to my mum. But when I told Jade, I plastered on a brave smile.
‘Don't worry, he'll make it,' I promised her, reassuring myself.
The following day, Ruddi began his chemo. The first round went well but, after the second, I noticed his tummy was starting to swell.
‘My poor little baby,' I soothed, stroking the sparse tufts of blond hair on his soft little head.
He smacked his lips groggily, curled an arm sleepily around the teddy I'd bought for him.
But a couple of days later, Ruddi could barely keep his eyes open and his tummy was growing even bigger. When I couldn't wake him that evening for tea, I panicked. In seconds, doctors were swarming around him.
‘His liver's failing,' a doctor explained. It was a rare, but terrible, side effect of the chemo.
‘Is there something you can do? He's fought the cancer so far, he can make it through...'
‘I'm afraid if Ruddi doesn't wake up in the next 24 hours, there's a chance he won't wake up at all,' the doctor interrupted me. ‘You need to ring your family so they can come and say goodbye.'
Goodbye? No one was saying goodbye to my baby boy, because he wasn't going anywhere.
So, I sat with him through the night, held on to his tiny hand.
‘Come on, my little warrior,' I pleaded. ‘Fight this.'
As the 24-hour deadline came and went, I knew he could hear me. Then, he opened his eyes. I knew that he was on the mend.
Finally, he was strong enough to have the tumour removed. But when surgeons operated, they discovered it had ravaged his prostate and bladder. They needed to be removed.
He'd have to use a urostomy bag to collect his wee until his teens, and wouldn't be able to father children naturally.
To make sure that Ruddi had my full attention, I left my job as a conference sales manager.
Then Ruddi was diagnosed with rickets. ‘The radiotherapy has hampered his bone growth,' the doctor explained. ‘He might
never walk normally.'
My poor baby had to be pumped full of more medicine, this time through a tube in his nose.
Craig was working all the hours he could as a sports development officer, but without my wage we started to struggle. Seventeen months after Ruddi went into hospital, I was declared bankrupt. ‘There's nothing we can do,' I sobbed. ‘Ruddi comes first.'
But it seemed, finally, the gods were smiling down on us. Ruddi was given the go-ahead to receive treatment in Florida - the first person ever to receive it on the NHS.
By the time we flew home, he seemed much stronger. Two months later, we were given the news we'd been praying for.
‘The cancer's gone,' his doctor announced. I was flooded with relief, but totally exhausted too.
‘What our family needs is a holiday,' I told my sister Charlotte.
‘Wouldn't it be great if there was a charity which provided holidays for families after their children had undergone stressful treatment?' I added.
It was like a lightbulb moment...
Why didn't I set up that charity? I could call it Ruddi's Retreat.
We're now trying to become a registered charity and raise money to build a holiday home in Yorkshire. And Ruddi will be a fantastic beacon of hope for them. He's three now and, once he's been cancer-free for five years, he'll get the all-clear.
I'm not worried, though - from the moment he took his first steps, I just knew that he'd be strong enough to kick the disease.


• For more information, email ruddisretreat@yahoo.co.uk


Ali Jones, 40, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire