'I thought my toddler was just shy – now doctors say it's too late'

A woman who believed their toddler was just "shy" has been told by doctors there is now nothing she can do.

Megan Rowe noticed her daughter Heidi had kept tilting her head to the side and in the weeks to follow more worrying developments revealed themselves. Her one-year-old daughter started limping just weeks after learning to walk which prompted Megan to seek a .

The GP determined Heidi had a club foot, a congenital condition which causes a new-born's feet to be abnormally positioned. After surgery, Megan noticed Heidi could not walk on her foot at all. Megan, a cleaner, went to A&E once more where doctors concluded it was club foot. But problems persisted once the family had returned home to Wigan, and Heidi eventually lost movement in her right arm.

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Speaking to , Megan said: "She didn’t seem herself. We rang the doctors and they told us to take her straight to A&E." Tragically, an MRI showed Heidi had a tumour and she was transferred to Royal where she underwent a biopsy. Heidi had a drain placed directly into her brain and remained in the ICU until a heartbreaking diagnosis was given to the family.

Heidi was revealed to have terminal, high grade, diffuse midline glioma - a type of brain tumour that typically occurs in midline structures of the brain like the brainstem, thalamus or spinal cord. The overall survival for people with diffuse midline glioma is less than one year.

Because Heidi's tumour is at the top of her spine, doctors say it can't be removed and will not respond to chemotherapy. It's also unclear if the tumour is pressing on the part of the spinal cord that controls breathing, which could make surgery impossible. While radiotherapy plans are being drafted, doctors have told Heidi's family there is nothing more they can do.

Megan said: "She would walk with her head tilted to the side and I put it down to her being shy because obviously you don’t think it will be anything else. On the day the results were found, they took us into a meeting and told us about the tumour. They said there isn’t any treatment out there proven to get rid of it.

"They gave us a time frame, saying that people with this kind of tumour have only lived for up to a year. They said they won’t do chemotherapy because it hasn’t been proven to do anything. Radiotherapy can shrink the tumour and potentially give her a longer life. We’re just hoping for more treatments to come out. We’re praying for a miracle, to be honest, because we want her here forever.

"It was a lot from the start. You find out she has a tumour, so you think she will be fine – she’ll get treatment and they’ll get rid of it, there are things they can do. But when you find out what it is and that they can’t do anything, it’s a lot. Obviously, it’s still a lot now. It was awful; I wish she wasn’t going through this. I wish I could take it away from her. There are no words. I just take it day by day. You don’t plan for tomorrow."