Harper’s older sister noticed a large lump developing on her neck on 4 March 2025, hours after she was struck by the football.<\/p>\n
Aaron said he took Harper to Ripley Urgent Treatment Centre, expecting the doctor to confirm a cyst.<\/p>\n
Instead, they were advised to attend King’s Mill Hospital in Sutton-in-Ashfield, where Harper underwent blood tests and CT scans – the results of which suggested she had neuroblastoma.<\/p>\n
“I never expected it,” said Aaron. “Never in a million years did I think it was cancer. <\/p>\n
“I broke down. I was worried all the time.”<\/p>\n
Harper was taken to Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC) in Nottingham over concerns the lump could be pushing against her windpipe and restricting her breathing.<\/p>\n
At QMC, which is operated by NUH, doctors confirmed the cancer had reached stage four and had spread through her nervous system to her chest, spine and neck.<\/p>\n
“We told her there was a monster inside her body, it shouldn’t be there and she needed medicine to make it smaller and smaller, because if you say cancer to a child, they haven’t got a clue,” said Aaron.<\/p>\n
Harper had 80 days of chemotherapy, followed by stem cell therapy, radiotherapy and six months of immunotherapy.<\/p>\n
On two occasions, Harper was placed in critical care, and doctors advised her family to say their final goodbyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harper’s older sister noticed a large lump developing on her neck on 4 March 2025, hours after she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":784099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-784098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/784099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}