Nursery World - A unique child - health: A doctor's diary

'Doctor, my son has a nasty infection on his face and it just won't heal despite his being on his third dose of antibiotics'.

This particular case will always stick in my memory. I was on call over the weekend when a concerned parent called the telephone hotline about her young son who had a skin infection which wasn't healing with standard antibiotics. He had been on several courses of antibiotics, with no improvement.

I questioned his mother further and it turned out he had suffered more than his fair share of infections over the last few weeks. In addition, he was pale and tired, which was unusual for him. The history was classic for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), the commonest childhood cancer.

I requested that the child attend the emergency clinic for a blood test. Sadly for the child, my suspicions were correct. By the same evening, he had been transferred from the local general hospital to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford for further tests and chemotherapy.

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