Mum Thought Toddler was Just Shy, Weeks Later Doctors Told her the Devastating Truth
Megan Rowe, 24, noticed her daughter Heidi was tilting her head to the side and dragging her foot – but she never expected the devastating news doctors would give her.
When Megan Rowe noticed her daughter Heidi kept tilting her head to the side, she initially thought the toddler was just being shy. However, concerns grew when the one-year-old began limping just weeks after learning to walk, prompting the worried mum to take her to a doctor. After explaining her symptoms to a GP, which included foot dragging and imbalance, the medic determined that the young girl had clubfoot. The congenital condition causes a newborn’s feet to be abnormally positioned.
But a few hours after leaving the surgery, Megan, who works as a cleaner, noticed little Heidi could no longer walk on her foot at all. Megan, also mum to five-year-old Bentley, took the tot to A&E where doctors again concluded she was suffering from clubfoot. However, after the family returned home to Wigan, Heidi’s condition continued to deteriorate, eventually seeing her lose movement in her right arm.
“She didn’t seem herself,” Megan, 24, told the Manchester Evening News. “We rang the doctors and they told us to take her straight to A&E.” Medics initially suspected the tot had an elbow injury but decided to carry out a CT scan which showed something suspicious. Tragically, an MRI revealed Heidi had a tumour and she was transferred to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital where she underwent a biopsy.
For the latest health and Covid news, sign up to our newsletter here. But complications from the medical procedure meant the tot suffered a bleed on her brain, resulting in the little girl being admitted to the intensive care unit. During a harrowing wait for biopsy results, young Heidi had to undergo a procedure to have a drain inserted directly into her brain due to heavy sedation. Complications arose when a tube placed in her airway caused her lung to collapse upon removal, necessitating its reinsertion into her lung.
While in the ICU, her family received the heart-wrenching diagnosis: Heidi was suffering from a terminal, high-grade diffuse midline glioma—a fast-growing brain tumour found in the central nervous system’s midline structures like the brainstem, thalamus, or spinal cord. With an average survival time of less than a year, Heidi’s situation is particularly dire as her tumour, located at the top of her spine, is inoperable and unresponsive to chemotherapy. The uncertainty of whether the tumour affects the part of the spinal cord that controls breathing further complicates potential surgical interventions. Radiotherapy plans are underway in the hope of shrinking the tumour, but doctors have informed Heidi’s family that there are no further treatment options available.
Reflecting on earlier signs, mum Megan shared: “She would walk with her head tilted to the side and I put it down to her being shy because obviously you don’t think it will be anything else. On the day the results were found, they took us into a meeting and told us about the tumour. They said there isn’t any treatment out there proven to get rid of it.
“They gave us a time frame, saying that people with this kind of tumour have only lived for up to a year. They said they won’t do chemotherapy because it hasn’t been proven to do anything. Radiotherapy can shrink the tumour and potentially give her a longer life. We’re just hoping for more treatments to come out. We’re praying for a miracle, to be honest, because we want her here forever.”
Heidi’s loved ones now depend on emerging therapies to improve the little girl’s quality of life and extend it as much as possible. A fundraising effort has been initiated to aid the family during this heart-rending period.
“It was a lot from the start,” Megan recounted. “You find out she has a tumour, so you think she will be fine – she’ll get treatment and they’ll get rid of it, there are things they can do. But when you find out what it is and that they can’t do anything, it’s a lot. Obviously, it’s still a lot now. It was awful; I wish she wasn’t going through this. I wish I could take it away from her. There are no words. I just take it day by day. You don’t plan for tomorrow.”
The heartbreaking journey Megan and Heidi are embarking on serves as a poignant reminder of the fragility of life and the strength and resilience of a mother’s love.