Parents of a six-year-old girl have told how she was diagnosed with an "unknown tumour" after she had been suffering from backache for several months.
Leah's parents Stephen Bennett and Claire were shown a 3D print of the tumour, which measured around nine centimetres long and was wrapped around her spine and blood vessels.
And Claire persuaded surgeons from Alder Hey and Royal Liverpool hospitals to carry out a risky six hour operation following a year of treatment after she had been diagnosed in 2019.
Paediatric surgeon Joanne Minford had shown the parents the 3D print of the tumour which had been the cause of the backache.
"Staring at it in front of my eyes was just horrifying - it looked huge and holding it made the hairs on my neck stand up. I held in my hands the very thing that was killing my little girl and that is quite a chilling experience," Stephen previously said.
Despite the horror of seeing the reality of the tumour, Stephen, felt the medical team wouldn't have gone to the lengths of creating the model if they had made the decision not to attempt the operation.
Yet medics declared it too risky to operate so Leah received a range of treatments to try and tackle the size of the tumour first.
Stephen said: "From very early on, we knew the challenge was to remove the tumour through surgery and to do that, it was felt that chemotherapy would need to have a significant impact in reducing the size of the tumour quite dramatically.
"I was told that the surgeons from Great Ormond Street, Bristol and Manchester had all given the opinion that surgery was not possible for Leah as it would be highly unlikely to be 'in her best interests'."
When Claire, Leah's mum, was told the news in a later meeting, she begged the consultant to speak with the rest of the surgical team to consider opening Leah up to see if there was anything they could do to tackle the tumour.
It is then that they are believed to have agreed to operate, reported the LiverpoolEcho.
Leah's operation took place on August 1, 2019, but there was only around a 10% chance of the surgeons being able to remove the tumour without causing Leah major harm like paralysis, due to potential damage to her spinal cord, or death.
But the operation was successful and Leah was discharged in time for her seventh birthday.
Now four years later and Leah, 10, is back at school, playing football and living as much of a normal life as she can.
On Sunday, July 2, she took part in the 10k Race For Life event at Haydock Park Racecourse with her dad.
This is the first time Leah has been able fundraise alongside her dad, who has already raised money Alder Hey Children's Hospital and is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for Cancer Research with seven friends.
Stephen said: "It was a really lovely moment to do the 10k with Leah. We didn't know if she would be able to do it but she walked the whole way and then sprinted at the end.
"With training to climb Mount Kilimanjaro there's a lot of going to North Wales and climbing up hills which she can't do, it was a really nice moment to do that with Leah, Phoebe and Claire."
Leah is has been on a targeted therapy since February 2021, where she takes medication twice a day.
Stephen said: "There's no major side effects and it allows her to live her life. It's not going to cure her but he have had stable scans for two and a half years now.
"It allows her to live a pretty normal life and we just need to have her bloods taken every few weeks and scans every six months. There's no better living proof on what science and funding research can achieve."
