Miracle kid who owes his life to city medics

Published on Saturday 2 February 2008 10:03

WHEN baby Joshua Slow-Clayton was given three days to live, his family never gave up hope.

Diagnosed with cancer at three weeks old, established medical thinking gave him almost no chance of survival.

After days of tests and scouring medical journals for clues, Dr Hamish Wallace, the Sick Kids' world-renowned cancer specialist, made the vital breakthrough.

There was a long road in front of Joshua and his family, but he would eventually become the first baby ever known to survive the form of cancer he contracted– choriocarcinoma.

Joshua – who celebrated his eighth birthday on Thursday – has grown up knowing the Sick Kids like a second home.

And he celebrated his special day by visiting the Scottish Parliament to deliver a letter to Health Minister Nicola Sturgeon, urging her to protect under threat services at the hospital.

The highest level paediatric cancer and neurology services could be removed from the Sick Kids under proposals being considered by Ms Sturgeon.

In his letter, accepted by Ms Sturgeon's deputy, Shona Robison, Joshua wrote: "I've had lots of operations and jabs and I go to lots of different parts of the Sick Kids. But when I am sad and sore the people who work there always make me laugh and feel better."

While offering no indication of whether the highest level of cancer and neurological care would continue to be offered at the Sick Kids, Ms Robison was upbeat about services in general.

She told Joshua and his mum Gaynor Clayton, 30, of Bingham Crescent: "All reports so far say children's cancer services should remain in Edinburgh and we want to keep services local. I can't say any more than that at the moment."

When he was diagnosed, doctors found seven tumours in Joshua's liver, as well as ten in his brain and three in his skin.

The hospital had never administered chemotherapy to someone so young before.

However, against all the odds he survived four or five days of chemotherapy every week for nine months, during which time he barely left the hospital. Dr Wallace called him his "miracle kid".

Undergoing such treatment has left Joshua with severe kidney and stomach problems that have already required one major operation and will need more. He is desperate for services to remain in Edinburgh.

Gaynor added: "The hospital means the world to us."