My daughter's simple cough turned out to be blood cancer - this is the glaring red flag we missed

Daily Mail​

24-05-2025

When 10-year-old Imohgen Alo started coughing in late 2023, her parents never imagined it could be something sinister.
She was a healthy, happy, sporty girl - one of those children always dashing across a field or giggling with friends.
There were no flashing warning signs. No dramatic fevers. No collapsed lungs or inexplicable bruises. Just a nagging cough.
'We were going to Bali for New Year's,' her mother, Stevie, told FEMAIL.
'She had a bit of a cold, and we gave her antibiotics. It cleared up. The cough came back on and off, but nothing too concerning.'
It seemed like the usual ups and downs of childhood - until one February afternoon, when Imohgen's grandmother noticed something wasn't right.
'She picked her up from school and said, 'What's that lump?' It was on the base of her neck, like a golf ball just sitting there,' Stevie recalled.
That lump would become the first visible symptom of something terrifying: a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer.
The next day, Stevie took Imohgen straight to the GP, where blood tests and an ultrasound were ordered immediately.
'The bloods came back clear,' Stevie said.
'We were relieved. Naively, I thought if something was wrong, it would show in the blood work. Imohgen was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, so we were hoping the lump was related to her thyroid.'
But then came the X-ray - and the CT scan that couldn't be done locally due to Imohgen's age.
They were sent straight to John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, where further imaging revealed a mass inside her chest, roughly the size of her father's fist.
The lump in her neck wasn't just swollen tissue; it was part of something much larger, something hiding behind her ribs.
By the following Wednesday, less than a week after that first GP visit, the biopsy results delivered the news every parent dreads: T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of leukaemia.
'I just kept thinking, it's the thyroid. It's nothing serious,' Stevie said.
'But when they took us into the room to give us the diagnosis, it felt like the floor just dropped. Your brain goes straight to: Is it treatable? Is she going to make it through this?'
Blood cancers like leukaemia can be notoriously hard to diagnose. Symptoms are often vague - persistent coughs, lingering colds, swollen glands, night sweats, or fatigue.
In Imohgen's case, it was a perfect storm of subtle signs: a recurring cough, a mild cold, and a lump that seemed to appear out of nowhere.
'Doctors told us that if we had waited even a few more days, she would have started showing more severe symptoms,' Stevie said.
'We were lucky we caught it early.'
But 'early' didn't feel lucky in the moment. Imohgen was immediately started on high-dose steroids and chemotherapy.
Her parents were suddenly thrust into a world of lumbar punctures, central lines, bone marrow biopsies, and hospital stays that stretched into days, then weeks, then months.
In those first few days, Imohgen's parents had just 20 minutes to collect themselves after hearing the diagnosis before going back into the hospital room to tell their daughter.
'You take off the mum and dad hat,' Stevie said.
'You become medical parents. You don't have a choice. You just move forward and do what you have to do.'
Imohgen's little brother, then five, had to adjust too.
'He started to get anxious,' Stevie said.
'Every time we said we were going to the hospital, he thought he wouldn't see her for another week.'
Despite the brutal side effects - nausea, exhaustion, painful muscle aches from the steroids, hair loss - Imohgen never lost her spirit.
'She's half Samoan and half Aboriginal, and when she found out she'd lose her hair, she said, 'It's okay, I'll look like The Rock,' Stevie laughed.
'She just flipped everything on its head and made us feel stronger, even when she was the one suffering.'
Even during treatment, Imohgen was dancing, filming TikToks from her hospital room, pulling pranks on nurses, and running laps around the ward when she felt up to it.
'Some kids with this type of diagnosis go straight to ICU because they can't breathe,' Stevie said.
'But Imohgen was still trying to go for a 1km run on her good days.'
That strength didn't make the bad days any easier.
'When the steroids hit, it was like the soul left our child,' Stevie said, her voice catching.
'She'd look straight through us, barely speak. We had to help her up the five stairs at our front door. It was heartbreaking.'
The financial toll was crushing. With Stevie and her husband shuttling between hospital and home, trying to keep both kids cared for, everything else took a backseat.
'We couldn't do things we used to, like trips to the snow or just going out as a family,' she said.
But the community stepped up.
'People dropped off meals, helped with our son, did fundraisers. We're so lucky to live near John Hunter and have such a supportive network.'
School also became a challenge. Imohgen missed most of 2023 but eventually connected to her classroom through a robot controlled from her iPad.
'It wasn't the same, but it helped. She really missed her friends,' Stevie said. 'She really missed her friends.'
Now, just over a year since that terrifying week in February, Imohgen is officially in remission.
She's still undergoing maintenance treatment - a chemotherapy tablet every night and lumbar punctures every six weeks - but her hair is growing back, and she's back in school full-time.
'She's not at full strength yet, but she's getting there. She's slowly returning to sport, and she's just so excited about her hair,' Stevie said.
There are still scares. Hospital visits. Tired days. Uncertainty. But there's also joy - ordinary, radiant, precious joy.
'She's the strongest person I know,' Stevie said quietly.
'If it wasn't for how strong she's been through all of this, I don't know how we would've made it through.'
The Leukaemia Foundation revealed blood cancer rates are soaring with a 79 per cent increase in incidence in the past two decades, with the disease on track to overtake all other cancers in Australia to be the most diagnosed and deadly cancer by 2035.
You cannot currently screen for, prevent, or reduce your risk of a blood cancer diagnosis, unlike other prevalent cancers like lung, breast, prostate, skin, and bowel.
The 7 symptoms of blood cancer Australians may be ignoring include:
The learn more about the signs and symptoms of blood cancer and the vital work of the Leukaemia Foundation's new public health campaign featuring The Blood Count, visit bloodcancer.org.au.