The girl who refuses to give up on life (From The Northern Echo)

The girl who refuses to give up on life

11:21am Tuesday 21st July 2009 in Echo Woman

At just 13, Ellie Othick-Bowmaker is confounding doctors with her ability to fight a brain tumour. Sarah Foster meets Ellie and her mum Heather.

TO anyone who didn’t know, Ellie Othick-Bowmaker looks like the picture of health. She is a pretty girl with long, blonde hair and apple cheeks and nothing in her face gives a hint of her serious illness. Yet Ellie is gravely ill. More than two years ago, she was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour and since then, she has undergone 26 courses of chemotherapy – a number virtually unheard of among cancer patients.

What makes Ellie special is her remarkable ability, against the odds, to withstand her treatment and continue fighting the disease that ravages her.

Meeting Ellie at her Scarborough home, her mum Heather at her side, she seems normal, if a little subdued for a 13-year-old. The only clues to her condition are this and her quiet, rasping voice – the consequences of her debilitating tiredness – and so Heather speaks for her. She explains how Ellie was first diagnosed.

“In February 2007 she had a fit during the night,” says the 38-year-old, who has two other children, Philip, 16, and Phoebe, three. “We dialled 999 and by the time the ambulance had arrived she’d stopped fitting, but we decided a check-up would be the best thing, I suppose. We went up to hospital and she had a huge fit, and they had to give her drugs to stop the second one. From there they sent her for a brain scan.”

THE fit had come out of the blue and at the time, doctors suspected epilepsy. Then over the next few weeks, Ellie began having bad headaches that made her sick. A further scan revealed the worst.

“They gave us the results immediately.

Unfortunately, there was a brain tumour,” says Heather. “I wasn’t prepared at all. I look back now and think ‘how didn’t I see that coming’ but I suppose you just don’t want to.”

It was explained to Ellie, then just 11, that she had a “lump” in her head and that she needed an operation.

She underwent surgery at Leeds General Infirmary – a procedure that was supposed to last no more than four hours but instead stretched to seven – and her anxious family was warned that she might be in hospital for up to three months and have to re-learn how to walk and talk. But when the anaesthetic wore off, Ellie showed her fighting spirit. “She came home on the fifth day after the operation and she went into town shopping with her dad on the Sunday,” says Heather. “Ellie came out of surgery and asked for McDonald’s chicken nuggets and chips and I walked into Leeds town centre and got them for her. She’s done that after each operation.”

The wheelchair that Ellie was provided with remained unused and she was able to walk and talk as normal, but the surgery had revealed potential problems. “The surgeon said the tumour was doing some things he hadn’t expected but it was being sent off for biopsy and we would have the results later,” says Heather. “The results said she had a grade four, malignant glioblastoma, which basically means that it was quick growing, so they thought that she would need radio and chemotherapy. Six weeks later she had six weeks of radiotherapy so every day we drove to Leeds and every afternoon she went to school.”

Remarkably, Ellie passed her SATS exams at Northstead County Primary School. The local community, inspired by her bravery, raised £4,000, which enabled the family – including Ellie, her dad Paul Bowmaker and his wife, who funded themselves; stepdad Jason Othick, mum, brother and sister – to go on holiday to Euro Disney, and for a while, all seemed well. By October 2007, Ellie had undergone three operations – the second because her scar became infected and the third because a cyst had formed inside her head, beginning to force it open – but at least she was responding to treatment.

Heather believes alternative therapies – namely homeopathy, reflexology and manuka honey, all thought to have healing properties – played a large part in this.

“In January 2008 we felt the chemotherapy was starting to tire Ellie out so we looked into homeopathy,”

says Heather. “I wanted it on the NHS because they also work with chemotherapy and they understand how that works, and it took me a year but I managed, and she’s never looked back. I put most of how well she’s been down to homeopathy.”

A turning point came last July, when Ellie had another seizure and a scan revealed a marble-sized lump in her head. Two more fits followed and she was diagnosed with epilepsy – a common side-effect of brain surgery – but undefeated, she raised almost £10,000 doing sponsored events for charity. She was nominated for a Young Champions Award and won not only the regional, but also the national competition.

Then, at the beginning of May, Ellie went for a check-up and doctors, satisfied that the staggering 25 rounds of chemotherapy she had so far undergone had worked, recommended taking her off it. It was during her very last course that she had an excruciating headache lasting about three days and another scan revealed the truth – the tumour was indeed back and this time, there was little that could be done about it. Ellie took the news with typical stoicism.

HEATHER’S main task is now one of pain relief and making her daughter as comfortable as possible. Ellie refuses to lose hope – her dream is to run a children’s nursery, and she still believes this may be possible – and Heather, too, is determined that she should live life to the full, organising frequent trips to London for her musical-mad daughter.

She is Ellie’s rock, ministering to her day and night with a resilience that is astounding, and her reward is seeing how well she has been, to the extent that she has surpassed all expectations.

Heather’s philosophy is simple: don’t let the illness take control. “My view, even right at the beginning, was that this can’t be our life – this has got to be something that’s happening in our life,” she says. “If we stay busy and enjoy life, then Ellie hasn’t got time to be ill.”