Ruby

Ruby’s story

At her second birthday party, Ruby happily enjoyed all the excitement and atmosphere. For Ruby’s parents, Victoria and Rob, and her big brother Freddy, this was a special day creating family memories. Not long after Ruby’s birthday party, Victoria and Rob noticed Ruby’s behaviour had changed. She had become quiet and withdrawn and had started to refuse food, when she was infamous for her huge appetite!  

Other vague symptoms included a wheezy chest, for which Ruby began a course of prescribed allergy medication. This seemed to help, but her appetite was not improving. Ruby’s parents were enjoying a rare weekend away when they received a telephone call from Ruby’s anxious grandparents. The local pharmacist had seen Ruby and thought she looked jaundiced. Ruby was clingy, unhappy, and vomiting.  

They immediately returned home and took their daughter to the local Accident and Emergency department. By this point, Ruby had stopped eating completely. She had lost so much weight that a worrying growth in her stomach became visible. Ruby was quickly transferred to St. George’s hospital where a tumour biopsy was planned, but her blood pressure was so high that the medical team considered it too dangerous to go ahead. Only when Ruby’s blood pressure was under control did the biopsy take place – the results of which left Ruby’s parents shocked and devastated. Their two-year-old daughter had stage 4 high-risk neuroblastoma – an aggressive childhood cancer. 

As with more than half of children diagnosed with neuroblastoma, the cancer had spread throughout Ruby’s body by the time she was diagnosed, making her condition one of the most difficult kinds of childhood cancer to treat. Ruby had a large tumour in her abdomen going up her spine and disease in her bone marrow. The tumour was pressing on her internal organs and made her extremely poorly. Her belly was swelling up and pushing on her lungs. She could hardly breathe and needed oxygen.

Ruby had two surgeries to remove the tumour in her tummy, along with endless amounts of chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy, high-dose chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant and immunotherapy to end her frontline treatment in 2017. 

Ruby’s family launched a fundraising campaign with support from Solving Kids' Cancer UK, in case Ruby needed to access further treatment not available through the NHS. Incredibly, over £500,000 was raised for Ruby's campaign. Ruby's disease was stubborn and it took a long time for her to get to a point of being 'no evidence of disease', and she was still having regular MIBG scans to monitor her disease post-treatment. Eventually, her remaining disease was no longer showing on scans and had disappeared. Her family decided that as she had been out of treatment for some time at this point, that they didn't want to put her through further maintenance treatment options.

Ruby is now 10 and has moved to yearly check-ups. In November 2022, she rang the end of treatment bell as she hit the incredible milestone of being five years cancer-free! Ruby faces some ongoing heath challenges as a result of all the treatment she received but remains a sassy, gutsy little girl, who loves ordering her older brother about. 

_{Solving Kids' Cancer UK's children's fundraising campaigns} 

_{Funds raised will go towards helping Ruby and her family. If Ruby no longer needs the funds or is in remission five years post the end of successful treatment, the funds will be used to support other children and families affected by neuroblastoma through our activities. For children with high-risk neuroblastoma, like Ruby, the survival rate is much lower than other childhood cancers. Upon relapse, this rate reduces even further.}