Two-Year Old Girl's 'Cold' Turned Out to be Leukemia

The parents of a two-year old girl who was suffering from a cold was informed by their physician that their child was actually suffering from leukemia, according to the Daily Mail.

Mandy and Bob Holmes were concerned after their daughter, Jessica, suffered from a cold that did not improve even after a few days. Bob, 43, took her to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary's A&E to get it checked out and she was prescribed with antibiotics for chest infection. Three days later, there was still no improvement and Jessica refused to eat and was asleep almost 23 hours daily. Her parents decided to bring her back to the hospital where the doctors carried out chest X-rays and diagnosed her with pneumonia.

A few days later, doctors gave Jessica a blood transfusion after getting the results of her blood tests and rushed her to Royal Manchester Children's Hospital. Mandy Holmes said: "At this point, we had no idea what was wrong - at worst I thought it would be asthma or diabetes. They put us on a ward where there were all these children with no hair and I thought it was just while they were waiting to put us on a different ward. Then a Macmillan nurse came and introduced herself to us but I could not understand why we needed a Macmillan nurse."

Shortly after, a consultant arrived and asked Mandy and Bob Holmes to come by for a private chat in his office. The parents were then informed that Jessica had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of white blood cells. "It was just awful. It was even more upsetting than when my father died - and that's saying something. But I was so overwhelmed by the shock it felt like I had been switched off - I went completely numb and nothing was registering."