The simple cough of my daughter turned out to be blood cancer – this is the striking red flag we missed

When the 10-year-old Imohgen Alo started coughing at the end of 2023, her parents never thought it could be something sinister.

She was a healthy, happy, sporty girl – one of those children who always stormed over a field or giggling with friends.

There were no flashy warning signals. No dramatic fever. No collapsed lungs or inexplicable bruises. Just a nagging cough.

“We went to Bali for New Years,” her mother, Stevie, told Femail.

“She had a cold and we gave her antibiotics. It has been clarified. The cough arrived and off again, but nothing to concern. ‘

It looked like the usual ups and downs of childhood – until an afternoon in February, when Imohgen’s grandmother noticed that something was wrong.

“She picked her up from school and said:” What is that lump? “It was on the base of her neck, like a golf ball that just sat there,” Stevie remembered.

That lump would become the first visible symptom of something frightening: a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer.

The next day Stevie Imohgen took directly to the doctor, where blood tests and an ultrasound were ordered immediately.

“The blood clearly came back,” said Stevie.

“We were relieved. Naive I thought if something was wrong, it would see in the blood work. Imohgen was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, so we hoped that the lump was related to her thyroid gland. ‘

But then came the X -ray – and the CT scan that could not be done locally because of the age of Imohgen.

They were sent directly to the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, where further imaging revealed a mass in her chest, about the size of her father’s fist.

The lump in her neck was not only swollen tissue; It was part of something much bigger, something that hid behind her ribs.

By the following Wednesday, less than a week after that first general practitioner, the biopsy results yielded the news where every parent fears: T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of leukemia.

“I just kept thinking, it’s the thyroid gland. It’s nothing serious, “said Stevie.

“But when they took us to the room to get us the diagnosis, it felt like the floor just fell. Your brain goes straight to: can it be treated? Is she going to get it through here? ‘

Blood cancer such as leukemia can be notorously difficult to diagnose. Symptoms are often vague – persistent cough, persistent cold, swollen glands, nocturnal sweating or fatigue.

In the case of Imohgen it was a perfect storm of subtle signs: a recurring cough, a mild cold and a lump that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

“Doctors told us that if we had waited a few days, she would have started showing more serious symptoms,” said Stevie.

“We were lucky that we caught it early.”

But ‘early’ did not feel happiness at the moment. Imohgen was immediately started with high dose of steroids and chemotherapy.

Her parents suddenly became in a world of lumbar neighbors, central lines, bone marrow biopsies and hospital enclosures that extended to days, then weeks, then months.

In those first few days, Imohgen’s parents only had 20 minutes to gather themselves after hearing the diagnosis before they went back to the hospital room to tell their daughter.

“You take the mom and daddy hat,” said Stevie.

“You become medical parents. You have no choice. You just move forward and do what you have to do. ‘

Imohgen’s little brother, then five, also had to adapt.

“He started to get anxious,” said Stevie.

“Every time we said we went to the hospital, he thought he wouldn’t see her for another week.”

Despite the brutal side effects – nausea, exhaustion, painful muscle pain of the steroids, hair loss – Imohgen never lost her mind.

“She is half Samoan and half Aboriginal, and when she found out she would lose her hair, she said,” it’s okay, I’ll look like the rock, “Stevie laughed.

“She just turned everything upside down and let us feel stronger, even when she was the one who suffered.”

Even during the treatment, Imohgen danced, filmed Tiktoks from her hospital room, pulled jokes on nurses and ran around the department when she felt like it.

“Some children with this kind of diagnosis go directly to the ICU because they can’t breathe,” said Stevie.

“But Imohgen still tried to go a 1 km run on her good days.”

That power did not make the bad days any easier.

“When the steroids struck, it was as if the soul left our child,” Stevie said, catching her voice.

“She would look straight through us, hardly speak. We had to help her on the five stairs at our front door. It was heartbreaking. ‘

The financial toll was crushing. With Stevie and her husband who commuted between the hospital and the house, in an attempt to have both children cared for, everything else took a rear seat.

“We couldn’t do things we used to have, such as traveling to the snow or just going out like a family,” she said.

But the community came up.

‘People stopped meals, helped our son, did fund recruiters. We are so lucky that we live near John Hunter and have such a supporting network. ‘

School also became a challenge. Imohgen missed most of 2023 but eventually connected with her classroom via a robot that is checked from her iPad.

“It wasn’t the same, but it helped. She really missed her friends, “said Stevie. “She really missed her friends.”

Now, just over a year since that terrifying week in February, Imohgen is officially in remission.

She still undergoes maintenance treatment – a chemotherapy tablet every evening and lumbar leaky tires every six weeks – but her hair grows back and she is back at school full -time.

“She’s not yet at full power, but she gets there. She slowly returns to the sport, and she is just so excited about her hair, “said Stevie.

There are still fears. Hospital visits. Tired days. Insecurity. But there is also joy – ordinary, radiant, precious joy.

“She is the strongest person I know,” Stevie said softly.

“If it wasn’t how strong she experienced this, I don’t know how we would have made it.”

The Leukemia Foundation revealed that blood cancer rates rise with an increase in the incidence of 79 percent in the past two decades, with the disease on their way to catching up all other cancers in Australia as the most diagnosed and deadly cancer by 2035.

You cannot currently screen on, prevent or reduce your risk of a blood cancer diagnosis, in contrast to other common cancers such as lung, chest, prostate, skin and intestine.

The 7 symptoms of blood cancer Australians can ignore include:

• Recurring infections
• Increased fatigue
• Inexplicable bruises or bleeding
• Inexplicable weight loss
• Soaked night sweat
• Pain in bones, joints or abdomen
• Enlarged lymph nodes, lumps or swelling

The more information about the signs and symptoms of blood cancer and the vital work of the new public health campaign of the Leukemia Foundation with the blood count, Visit Bloodcancer.org.au.