Clare said: “It’d just been her fourth birthday, and we had gone on holiday to Devon.
“We were at a caravan park, and she was at the children’s disco one night, and another child ran into her, and she was complaining about having a headache, absolute beside herself crying.”
The family took Seren to A&E where it was initially thought her symptoms were a neck condition called Torticollis.
However, over the following days Seren’s symptoms worsened.
A CT scan revealed she had a brain tumour in the back of her head.
She was rushed by ambulance to the specialist children’s neurological ward at University Hospital Southampton (UHS) where an MRI scan showed the tumour was operable.
Mark said: “She had 12 hours of brain surgery. It was deemed an amazing success. The guys were absolutely incredible.”
When the tumour was confirmed to be cancerous, she was referred to University College London Hospital (UCLH) to undergo six weeks of PBT.
In November 2025, Seren had her post-treatment scan and was then onto three monthly scans for at least two years.
But in May 2026, they showed her tumour had grown back and spread.
Mark said: “It had got pretty big pretty. And it had grown into the brainstem.
“So within a three-month period, it had not only returned in the area that it had been treated, it had spread across the brain and spine.”
Clare said: “When she relapsed, there were no options for a cure, and that was just really shocking. Like no medications, chemotherapy wasn’t an option.
“We could have had the intracranial, but again, it would’ve just made her really poorly. It wouldn’t have cured her.”
Mark added: “All this would be kind of to buy time.
“And as a parent, knowing now the outcome, and your daughter doesn’t know anything about it and doesn’t look like it, it’s pretty heartbreaking.”
The family spent time making memories together before Seren passed away at Julia’s House hospice in July.