BRAVE Newsome youngster Sophie Edwards is enjoying time at home with her family after a gruelling 10 weeks in hospital.
And she’s still smiling, as she and her family await a potential life-saving operation.
The seven-year-old leukaemia sufferer was allowed home after undergoing intensive chemotherapy treatment.
She now has to wait until doctors at St James’ Hospital in Leeds give her family the call to tell them she can be admitted for a bone marrow transplant which will be later this year.
Doctors believe they have found a match which will give the Stile Common Junior School pupil a fighting chance.
In the meantime she is spending time with her mum Emma, dad Andrew and brother Sam, who will be 13 on Sunday.
Her dad Andrew said: “It’s brilliant having Sophie home. We’re having to be careful and she can’t really go out, because we don’t want her to pick up any infections, but she’s happy being out of hospital watching her DVDs and drawing.
“She’s also enjoying seeing her brother Sam, whose been great while she was in hospital. They get on really well.”
Sophie was diagnosed with leukaemia in February. It became more complicated when she was told she had the rare Philadelphia Syndrome.
This condition, which affects about eight children a year in the UK, can only be cured by a bone marrow transplant.
It will still be a while however before Sophie can go to Stile Common Junior School, where she was due to start next week.
By the time she can return to school next year it will be to a new Hillside Primary School building on fields near the present school, off Headlands Road.
Before Sophie has her transplant she will need to return to St James’s two or three weeks beforehand for more intensive chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The actual bone marrow transplant takes two to three hours and she would then need to spend around five weeks in isolation in hospital and another couple of weeks on the ward before being allowed home.
The next six months would be vital to her recovery as her body could reject the transplant at any time.
Her family are remaining positive and hope her transplant will ensure Sophie’s eighth birthday on January 1 will mark the start of a better year for all of them.
