Mum's heartache as five-year-old daughter's suspected sprained arm turns out to be terminal cancer

Bonnie-leigh Spence has been given just six months to a year left to live after her diagnosis changed rapidly over the course of nine weeks.

Now her mum, Zoe, who is formerly of Burnley, is fundraising to move her family from Oswaldtwistle to be closer to Newcastle where Bonnie is staying in hospital. The mum-of-five also hopes the money will give her daughters as many special memories together as possible to make the most of the time Bonnie has left.

The family has so far raised £8,870 through nearly 500 donations. Talking about the support from the community, Zoe said: “It means everything to me. It’s giving me that chance to be with my daughter. It’s the only time she’s been away from me and it’s the most important time to be with her.”

The family’s nightmare began two days after Bonnie’s fifth birthday, just before Christmas Day, when she began suffering from excruciating pain in her forearm, which was swollen. Worried she had broken her arm, Zoe took her to A&E at Royal Blackburn Hospital. An X-ray revealed her arm was not broken and medics thought it was likely to be a bad sprain, requiring rest and compression.

But by New Year’s Eve, Bonnie’s forearm was still swollen and Zoe began to believe something more serious was going on. They returned to A&E and, after a second X-ray, the doctors suspected the youngster had a cyst. The following week, she underwent an ultrasound and had bloods taken, but neither flagged any problems. A week passed and Bonnie had an MRI scan.

Three days later, Zoe received a phone call that would change everything: the swelling on her daughter’s forearm was actually a tumour.

The five-year-old was referred to Birmingham Children’s Hospital for a biopsy, leaving the family waiting for another week. The tumour had continued to grow, and Zoe says Bonnie lost mobility in her forearm and fingers, and was in constant excruciating pain.

Desperate for answers, the mum rang the hospital daily, and says the response was the same: “Sit and wait”. Taking matters into their own hands, Zoe and her ex-husband Iain, Bonnie’s father, drove her to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle where she was immediately admitted. Zoe says the staff were “shocked at the size of Bonnie’s forearm” and how much pain she was in. She was immediately put on morphine and the hospital promptly chased up the biopsy results.

That’s when the family received the information they’d been dreading: the tumour was cancerous.

Due to the aggressiveness of the disease, doctors immediately began preparing Bonnie for chemotherapy, with an MRI scan revealing the cancer had spread from her forearm to both her lungs. Zoe was told the tumour’s size had led to a compression syndrome that damages the nerves. An infection soon followed and attacked Bonnie’s kidneys, leading to the decision to have her arm amputated.

But despite everything she’s been through, Bonnie “is full of smiles” and recently enjoyed her halfway birthday by celebrating with a party.

If you’d like to help her family create more special moments for her, please donate to the cause at https://gofund.me/b673e005