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A mum has fulfilled her dying wish to see her daughter enjoy a dream holiday at Disneyland Paris.
Melissa Chance spent a magical five days with eight-year-old Izzy and her husband Matt after doctors delivered the devastating news that she had terminal cancer.
The 36-year-old of Sandeman Way, Biddenden, who also has brittle bone disease, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009.
Melissa said: “I found a breast lump and at first doctors told me not to worry because it was likely to be an abscess but after tests it was found I had cancer.”
The months of gruelling chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment that followed at Maidstone Hospital appeared to have worked and it left Melissa clear of the disease for five years.
The bubbly mum said she thought she had beaten the cancer after passing the all-important milestone but her hopes were shattered just two months later. She was putting plates in the dishwasher when she went numb down the right side of her body.
Tests at King’s College Hospital in London delivered the terrible news that Melissa had a massive inoperable brain tumour caused by the breast cancer that had silently spread, and in February she learnt that she had a year to live.
At first Melissa and Matt tried to hide the truth from their little girl and Melissa said: “If Izzy saw me upset I would just say that I’d hurt my toe or something.”
But doctors at the Hospice on the Weald, where the devoted mum will spend her final days, advised her to tell Izzy the truth.
Melissa said: “When we told Izzy that mummy was going to be an angel in heaven she cried so much. I have never seen a child cry in the way she did. But children are very resilient and she is happy now that she knows we are not hiding anything and seems to have accepted it.”
The pharmacy dispensing technician, who worked at the former Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, said that taking her daughter on a Disneyland Paris break in July, which was paid for by family, had fulfilled a longstanding promise.
Melissa said: “I couldn’t die without keeping my promise to Izzy to take her to EuroDisney. When she saw all the princesses, especially Princes Anna from Frozen, her face was a picture.
"She was so excited when Mr Smee from Captain Hook took her hand and kissed it. When I saw her so happy I knew Izzy’s dream had come true and I can go peacefully now that I have done that for her.”
Brave Melissa is undergoing state-of-the-art CyberKnife cancer treatment at Mount Vernon Hospital, Watford. It involves using robotics to pinpoint a tumour and deliver a precise radiotherapy beam without damaging heathy tissue.
It is hoped that the treatment will shrink her tumour and give her more time to fulfil two more modest wishes, Melissa and Matt married at Tunbridge Wells register office in 2007, but haven’t had a honeymoon.
Now the couple plan to spend a few precious days in Spain together.
Melissa said: “I will be happy to go anywhere with a beach and it means I will get my other wish to travel on a plane for the first time ever.”
Melissa and Matt are fundraising for the Hospice in the Weald and to make a donation go to www.justgiving.com/charitydudes2015/