Cancer girl ready for school

Charlotte Cook and her parents celebrate

A little girl is going to school for the first time - after overcoming an extremely rare form of lung cancer.

Charlotte Cook, of Bromley, Kent, was just three when she developed the disease, and was given a 50-50 chance of living by experts at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

You just think is this nightmare ever going to end, and for us it did with happy results

Debbie Cook

In October 1999 Charlotte was diagnosed with pleuropulmonary blastoma - such a rare form of cancer, the doctor treating her had never seen it before.

A tumour the size of a small football had grown in her lung and attached itself to the diaphragm.

However, after lengthy treatment involving six different drugs to kill the tumour she is now in full remission.

On Tuesday, she will at Southborough Primary School in Bromley, which her seven-year-old brother Geoffrey already attends

'No worse news'

Charlotte and friend

Charlotte's father Clive said: "There is no worse news you could ever receive. It was the end of the world for us on the day we were told what she was suffering.

Her mother Debbie said: "You just think is this nightmare ever going to end, and for us it did with happy results."

Mrs Cook told how her daughter's hair was straight before it fell out during treatment, but later grew back curly.

Dr Linda Lashford, paediatric oncologist and the Cancer Research Campaign's director of drug development, said doctors treating Charlotte had to use American research into children with the same tumour because it is so rare.

She said: "We now have a special tumour bank in the UK and keep rare tumours, with the parents' permission, so we can try and promote research into that type of rare tumour."

The Cook family have leant their support to an initiative from the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC) to raise awareness of the disease among young people.

Five years ago six out ten children who had cancer survived. However, the advent of specialist centres has seen that figure rise to seven out of ten.

Professor Gordon McVie, CRC director general, said: "Children get really well looked after, it is one of the big success stories of the NHS.

"In my view it is about time the adult cancer centres got themselves organised the same way."