Florence Wilde, a one-year-old girl from Stourbridge, West Midlands, was diagnosed with a rare and life-threatening cancer after doctors repeatedly dismissed her symptoms as constipation. Her parents, Anna Chattaway and Dom Wilde, both 32, say they were told her swollen stomach and tiredness were due to constipation and were prescribed laxatives, which left her crying in pain.
Repeated visits to the GP
Anna, a clinical psychologist, said: “She was diagnosed a month after her first birthday. There was a period of six weeks beforehand where she was poorly with one thing or another. She picked up infections, she had hand foot and mouth, she had antibiotics but remained off for a while. She started to get a swollen tummy and for three weeks we were back and forth to the local GP. We were told she was constipated at the GP - for three weeks I had to force-feed her laxatives which was horrendous.”
When her stomach did not go down, they were given more laxatives, but it continued to grow. Anna said: “She wasn’t right and the laxatives weren’t helping so we had to keep pushing the doctors. They struggled to examine her. On one occasion a GP said she’s fine and: 'Let’s address the elephant in the room, we don’t think it’s cancer'.”
Diagnosis and treatment
It was only when the family pushed for a blood test that Florence was finally diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer that starts in a type of nerve cell, in November 2024. Anna said: “We went to the GP again for the final time, and my mum pushed for a blood test. Her bloods were heightened and they referred us to the PAU immediately. We had another doctor who felt her stomach. As soon as he felt her tummy he said he didn’t think it was poo, there were lumps and bumps.”
Florence, now two, underwent surgery at Birmingham Children's Hospital on November 26, 2024, to remove a 30cm tumour, which weighed 2kg while she weighed just 13kg, making up nearly 15 per cent of her body weight. She started emergency chemotherapy the next day. Anna added: “She had three months of induction chemotherapy to try and shrink the tumour. They thought the disease was in one place, in her stomach, they assumed it was localised. It wasn’t until she had further scans in January 2025, that they realised she had metastatic, with the disease in her spine.”
Fundraising for anti-relapse treatment
Florence had up to 95 per cent of the tumour removed in March 2025, before beginning high-dose chemo three weeks later. She started five cycles of immunotherapy in October 2025, and in April this year her parents were told the tumour had stopped progressing. The family are now fundraising £100,000 to pay for anti-relapse treatment called DFMO, which was withdrawn in April a week before she became eligible. Anna said: “Florence has finished the gold standard NHS treatment, after that you can either watch and wait to see if the cancer comes back, or other families chose to do a relapse prevention treatment, but they aren’t NHS protocol. We decided we wanted her to have a treatment called DFMO. It came to the UK in 2024 and then it was withdrawn in April, a week before she became eligible to start. We’ve decided to now raise the money to fund it ourselves as it costs £100,000.”
Neuroblastoma is a rare type of cancer that develops from immature nerve cells in children up to five. For high-risk cases the survival rate can be up to 50 per cent for some children, making early diagnosis essential.
