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A boy’s brain tumour ‘the size of a clementine’ was missed by doctors - and only discovered after his mother threatened to get out her chequebook and pay for a scan.
Miles Davis, aged five, had suffered tell-tale signs including prolonged bouts of vomiting over nine months, once being sick every day for 18 days.
He also had problems with his balance and the pupils of his eyes were dilated.
Cheryl Davis, 42, threatened to pay for a private brain scan after NHS doctors were hesitant to give one to her son. Miles, five, pictured centre with his mother and his two brothers Lucas and Edward, eventually had a scan - showing a tumour which could have been there since birth
But Miles’s illness was initially dismissed as a vomiting syndrome and he was discharged from hospital at least four times. Doctors were reluctant to send him for a scan because of the risk posed by radiation.
Miles’s mother Cheryl Davis, 42, from Bicester, Oxfordshire, said the scan was eventually ordered only after she ‘threw her toys out of the pram’.
She recalled: ‘I said, ‘I want a brain scan and I will pay for it. It doesn’t matter how much it costs. I will get my chequebook out now and I will pay for a scan. If it comes back clear, you keep the cheque. If it comes back with something on it then you are paying for it.
‘I said ‘Where can I go privately for a scan?’ The doctor said ‘You do not need to do that’, and I said ‘I do because I keep saying there is something wrong with his head and nobody believes me'.'
Her son’s case comes after statistics were released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) showing that the number of young people dying from brain tumours in the UK is the highest in Europe.
The 12-13 week average time it takes to diagnose cases in the UK is 50 per cent slower than some other European countries, the WHO adds.
Last year, about 500 people aged 2 - 24 were diagnosed with brain tumours and 125 died.
Miles eventually received a scan, paid for by the NHS, at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire. The scan was delayed for two days until the Monday as the procedure was not carried out on weekends
Miles eventually received a scan at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire, without charge and on the NHS.
The scan was delayed for two days until the Monday, as the procedure was not carried out at weekends.
Mrs Davis said: ‘I carried Miles in on Monday morning. He couldn’t even walk at that point. He could not stand up any more. I was holding him in my arms as he was being sick. He was out with the fairies.
‘A tumour the size of a clementine was found, which the doctors said may have been growing since birth.’
Miles was transferred to Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital where he underwent surgery two days later.
Although critical of Miles’s care before the scan, Mrs Davis said that from the moment the tumour was discovered in 2010, she ‘could not praise highly enough’ the swift treatment given to Miles which included rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
'When we spoke to other parents, they were all saying they had to fight to get their children referred to hospital. Yet the quicker the diagnosis of brain cancer, the greater the chances of survival’
Cheryl Davis
When the cancer returned in Miles’s spine in May 2013, the family faced an agonising decision between localised radiotherapy or wider treatment on his spine and brain which could attack any undetected cancers but also carried a risk of brain damage.
They took the risk - and it paid off.
Now aged nine and nicknamed ‘Smiley Miley’ because of his positive attitude, Miles has scans every three months to check the cancer has not returned.
Mrs Davis is calling on GPs to change their attitudes on admitting children for brain scans.
She said: ‘We had been going in and out of the GP’s office for two weeks. We kept being told that he could be looked after in the community and that they could see nothing wrong with him, it was just a virus.
'I was saying: ‘We have had [this sickness] a lot throughout the year’. I insisted on [Miles] being admitted.’
Mrs Davis believes many GPs are ‘too reluctant’ to refer children to hospital - potentially delaying diagnosis in cancer cases which can affect chances of survival.
She said: ‘It was not just us. When we spoke to other parents, they were all saying they had to fight to get their children referred to hospital. Yet the quicker the diagnosis of brain cancer, the greater the chances of survival.’
A charity, the Children’s Brain Tumour Foundation, has been set up by her and her husband, to raise awareness and fund child brain tumour research.
And Mrs Davis is also urging GPs’ surgeries to carry cards provided by the Headsmart campaign, which detail the symptoms of brain tumours.
Concern about Miles’s case was echoed by Sue Farrington Smith, chief executive of Brain Tumour Research.
She said: ‘This is yet another example of a family facing immense stress as a result of the lack of awareness about brain tumours. People tell us far too often: ‘I had to fight to get the scan we needed to diagnose what we suspected all along’.'
A spokeswoman for Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs both the Horton General and the John Radcliffe hospitals, said: ‘Scans are undertaken when deemed clinically appropriate by the clinicians caring for the patient at the time.
'Clinicians always seek to avoid unnecessary exposure to x-rays in children.’
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