This Is Cheshire

'Mummy when will the sick go away?'

From the Guardian Series, first published Wednesday 19th Mar 2003.

PLAYTIME has been cut short for little Charlotte Wetherell.

Weeks of chemotherapy have left her too weak to join her friends at playschool.

Instead she sits at home, watching her favourite television programmes and playing her toy guitar.

But parents Sarah and Andrew know that all she really wants is to get better.

"She asks 'When will the sick go away?'" said mum Sarah.

A tiny scar is all that remains of the 2½-hour operation to remove Charlotte's kidney.

However, the three-year-old's blonde locks have all but gone because of the treatment for cancer.

"She asked me to put a clip in her hair the other day and it broke my heart," said Sarah.

"The only thing that has bothered her about it is that the hair has been getting in her mouth."

On Monday the mother-of-three said many friendships had been forged during their daughter's stay at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.

Inspired by the courage of all the young children with cancer, Sarah now wants to raise money to buy them toys.

"Their courage and resilience is fantastic," she said. "They don't bother about their hair and have competitions about whose falls out first."

Sarah, formerly of Racefield Road, Knutsford, and Andrew took their daughter to Macclesfield Hospital on December 19 after discovering blood in her urine.

Charlotte had also complained of headaches. Doctors performed a biopsy and the family spent Christmas on a hospital ward in Manchester waiting for news.

"Christmas Day was awful because the only thing that looked different on the ward were the nurses who were in their own clothes," she said.

Decorations at their home in Bucklow Avenue, Mobberley, were put up for the couple's two sons.

But the family had their Christmas lunch three weeks ago as they settled into a new routine with Charlotte.

"Friends saw us in the supermarket and were wishing us happy Christmas because they knew what we were doing," said Sarah, 27.

On Monday Charlotte was at home watching the Tweenies like any other little girl. Only her hair loss gave away the trauma of the past four months.

It was the chemotherapy that worried Sarah and Andrew after watching other children suffer the side effects.

"The children moan because they can't cry and I thought God we are going to do that to her soon," she said.

"She felt well in herself and was running round the ward and I thought how could we do this to her?"

Doctors prescribed four weeks of chemotherapy.

"She couldn't eat because it hurt to chew," said Sarah, a former medical secretary.

Charlotte now faces weekly trips to hospital and will remain on chemotherapy drugs until August 12.

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