Nobody wants! to put their child through that

MUM'S ANGUISH AS SON'S BIRTHMARKS REVEAL RARE GENETIC CONDITION

- NICOLE WOOTTON-CANE

A MUM who discovered her son's 'birthmarks' were actually a sign of a little-known genetic condition has spoken of her devastation.

Clare Scully, from Longsight, said she always 'assumed' small marks on son Jaxon's skin were birthmarks. But when he was suddenly and dramatically taken ill with pneumonia aged three, doctors recognised them as a symptom of something more.

He was sent for genetic testing, and was confirmed to have neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a genetic condition that causes tumors to grow along nerves.

When he was six, Jaxon began suffering headaches and was referred by an optician to the hospital. There, doctors discovered two growing tumours on his optic nerve and his brain. Now aged eight, the brave boy is undergoing gruelling chemotherapy at Royal Manchester Children's Hospital in a battle to shrink them.

"I always thought Jaxon had little birthmarks because he's mixed race, so I just thought it was skin pigmentation," she told the Manchester Evening News.

But when she rushed three-yearold Jaxon to hospital in December 2019 with pneumonia, doctors spotted them and quizzed her over how long he had had them. "I said 'oh yes they've always been there, I never really notice them because they came up all the time," she said.