Now brave Isabella has finished her treatment – and hopes to go to Disneyland

Grateful parents Adam Dale and Jessica Welsh have opened up about their baby daughter’s harrowing experience with cancer – after strangers ‘flooded’ them with kindness. Two-year-old Isabella Dale was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia at the Royal Stoke University Hospital when she was just 10 months old.

The Fegg Hayes couple – who have two other children – had believed little Izzie was a perfectly healthy baby girl. However, a seemingly harmless symptom soon revealed something very worrying.

Dad Adam, aged 34, said: “We spotted a tiny, pin-prick bruise rash on the bottom of her feet. We left it a few days, as we’ve had other kids and we’ve seen rashes before. It didn’t make us panic right away.

“But soon it had spread everywhere. It was on her belly, it was on her back, on her arms. So I tried to get her in the doctors. The GP told me they had no appointments available, but I was determined. Because of her age there was no way she wasn’t getting seen. I said whether you give her an appointment today or not, I’ll be bringing her down.

“The doctor examined her. Izzie looked quite pale, so we thought the doctor was going to say she was anaemic. But they told us they wanted us to go to the children’s assessment unit in the Royal Stoke University Hospital. From there it went dreadfully downbank. They did a blood test. Soon the results came back and the doctors sat us in a room. They said they couldn’t be absolutely certain without a bone marrow aspiration but they were confident our baby daughter had blood cancer.”

Izzie was rushed to Birmingham Children’s Hospital for further testing. Medical experts soon confirmed Adam and Jessica’s worst fears on March 1, 2023, handing the infant a formal cancer diagnosis.

“It was hard, and still is hard,” Adam explained. “Nobody wants to see their little girl go through something like that. And the worst part is you feel like you can’t do anything. You wish you could just make it stop for them but obviously it doesn’t work like that. So yeah, it’s been a real challenge for myself and my partner. Her sisters have really struggled with it too.

“But Izzie’s doing really well. Obviously the situation isn’t brilliant, but she’s responded the best she can to the treatments. That little girl has had more treatments than most people have in their adult lives. She’s had chemo, lumbar punctures, you name it. She was asleep more than she was awake. Now, after more than two years she’s finally finished all her treatments. There’s still many years of hospital appointments to come, but she’s finished for now and that’s the main thing.”

Izzie Dale spent most of her early life in hospital

Adam has launched an online fund-raiser to try to take Izzie to Disneyland Paris.

“It took a lot for me to set up this GoFundMe,” he said. “I had to swallow a lot of pride to do it. I pondered on it for week and weeks – I wanted to do it all myself, as a parent. But I thought there’s a lot of nice people out there and doing the fundraising could help get us there quicker.

“Initially the idea was to just share it around with a few people I know. We didn’t expect much of a response. Not many people know Izzie outside of our family and a few neighbours. Because of her condition and how young she is, we’ve kept her wrapped in cotton wool. The poor girl’s barely left the house apart from to go the hospital, just because of how bad her immune system is.”

However, Adam and Jessica were soon ‘blown away’ by the support they received from kind-hearted individuals from around Stoke-on-Trent.

Adam explained: “A young lady named Sam got in touch with me and told me she would be climbing Mount Snowdon for us. Then my cousin set up a raffle with loads of amazing prizes. Then some other ladies – Lizzie and Gemma – hosted a day and night event in Burslem with raffles, quizzes, a fancy dress contest. Another young lad named Bradley Maurice got in touch with us to tell us he’s going to do another fundraiser. He’s a 22-year-old lad who I’ve never met in my life. He told us he’d be doing a six-hour run from Baddeley Green to Manchester. I couldn’t believe it. Honestly, the amount of support and kindness we’ve received has blown my mind. There’s that much going on that it’s hard to keep track of it all. It’s given us some much-needed positivity and we couldn’t be more grateful.”

You can support Izzie’s trip to Disneyland by visiting the GoFundMe page, here.

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