A three-year-old whose birthmark was strangling her to death can finally smile after becoming the first patient in Britain to trial a pioneering treatment.
When Millie Field was born, midwives dismissed the small blue mark on her face as a bruise caused during delivery.
But within days, it had developed into a large, red growth which had a lethal stranglehold on her windpipe, jaw and voicebox.
Doctors diagnosed hemangioma, a birthmark caused by a benign tumour of the blood vessels in the skin. It can grow rapidly - and in severe cases, such as Millie’s, it can block the airways.
By the time she was three weeks old, Millie was in intensive care with major breathing difficulties.
She had a tracheostomy tube fitted in a seven-hour operation, which enabled her to breathe but left her unable to make a sound.
Her devastated parents, bank worker Michelle, 37, and Stuart, 36, a fraud investigator, feared their daughter might never be able to breathe independently, let alone talk or smile.
Mrs Field, of Rochford, Essex, said: “One of the saddest parts was not being able to feed her and look after her and never hearing her cry or make a sound.
“The tumour was growing everywhere meaning she couldn’t suck, swallow and breathe at the same time. It all happened so fast. One minute we had our baby daughter and were imagining what she was going to do in the future and the next minute all those things felt like a dream.”
Doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital, in London, gave Millie strong steroids to shrink the tumour, but these had little effect.
With her daughter still seriously ill in hospital after six months, Mrs Field heard about a drug trial in France for propranolol, a beta-blocker traditionally used to treat hypertension and heart conditions, which had been shown to shrink hemangiomas.
Mrs Field said: “We discussed it with Millie’s dermatologist and with her ear, nose and throat specialist, but at that time because she had pneumonia and was having breathing problems they didn’t think it was a good idea.
“But in the end we had to try it. She needed morphine on a regular basis just to make her comfortable. She had no quality of life and was just getting worse and worse.”
The gamble paid off. Millie’s condition started to improve almost immediately, the birthmark began to shrink and fade, and within a week she was allowed home from hospital.
Mrs Field, who also has a 15-year-old son, Ben, said: “It’s completely changed her life. The tumour was really sore and she never liked to be touched or picked up because it gave her so much pain.
“But now, we were able to kiss and cuddle her and within a few days she was able to move her head from side to side.”
However, Millie’s battle was far from over. The tumour had caused so much damage that she had to have a new airway constructed using a piece of rib cartilage last year. She stopped taking the drugs last August after two years of treatment, and this month will undergo surgery to reconstruct her lip.
Mrs Field said: “She still has some speech problems because of the damage to her mouth, but she can basically do everything a normal three-year-old can do.
“I sometimes worry about how people will react to her when she starts school as my instinct is to protect her.
“As far as I’m concerned she is beautiful. We are just glad she has been given the chance to live her life like any other little girl.” - Daily Mail