![Leah on her bicycle yesterday – she is still enjoying the Christmas gift she had been looking forward to so much. Photo: Max Xuereb Leah on her bicycle yesterday – she is still enjoying the Christmas gift she had been looking forward to so much. Photo: Max Xuereb]()
Leah Xuereb, the four-year-old cancer fighter who underwent life-saving treatment last year, has had to return to hospital but is recovering well and looking “fantastic”, according to her parents.
In November, Leah had won the nation’s hearts when her parents made a plea through The Times to fund her treatment for a rare form of cancer in a specialised Texan hospital after treatment in London failed.
It was funded by the Maltese Government and local media gave regular updates on her progress.
Leah then returned to Malta just a few days before Christmas to the delight of her brother Owen, her grandparents and all those who had helped her.
The little girl “filled the house again” according to her aunt Josefa, but the family was in for some bad news on New Year’s Eve when they were informed that cancer traces had been detected in her body.
“Our happiness lasted a couple of weeks. We had been warned this could happen after the big operation. The scan results had given the all clear, but when the cancer trace marks rose, we were devastated,” her mother Zhana Xuereb told The Times yesterday. In fact Leah started chemotherapy at Mater Dei Hospital a week later and is still undergoing...