Father posts video of cancer-suffering daughter, aged five, climbing stairs after chemotherapy
'My daughter’s body is crushed by chemo but she won’t let me carry her up steps to bed. ‘I’ll make it,’ she says each night – and does. So tough,' says Colin Dunlap
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Your support makes all the difference.The bravery and determination of a five-year-old girl with leukaemia has been captured by her father who filmed her climbing the stairs to go to bed.
Colin Dunlap said his daughter Darran, whose body has been weakened by chemotherapy, was “so tough” to insist on walking upstairs on her own.
“My daughter’s body is crushed by chemo but she won’t let me carry her up steps to bed. ‘I’ll make it,’ she says each night – and does. So tough,” he wrote on Twitter, where he posted the video.
“May that previous tweet give you some motivation to press on; garner some will to do something you think is too tough. She does that for me,” he added.
Mr Dunlap, a radio host from Pittsburgh in the US state of Pennsylvania, said Darran had only been undergoing cancer treatment for a month.
“Just over a month ago Darran was sprinting up those steps to bed – quite literally had to tell her to slow down. She will sprint again,” he wrote in a third tweet.
Darran was diagnosed with leukaemia in November following a visit to hospital when she was complaining of hip pain, Mr Dunlap wrote in a column for CBS Pittsburgh.
“This cancer diagnosis and the way it has blindsided our family and thrown it for a total 180 in just a week has been incredible,” he wrote.
“But the way Pittsburgh has rallied behind us and with us has been so much stronger.”
The radio host said he had been overwhelmed by calls, texts and messages of support from people in the local area.
“Little girls shouldn’t have to worry about chemo, but Colin Dunlap’s daughter Darran is a fighter,” wrote local news anchor Jim Lokay in response to the video.
“Inspired by this video of Colin Dunlap’s little fighter. She’s an inspiration to us all,” wrote Jay Costa, the area’s senator.
Leukaemia – cancer of the blood cells – is the most common cancer in children and teens, according to the American Cancer Society.
And according to Cancer Research UK, there were 9,534 new cases of leukaemia in 2014 in the UK, with 46 per cent of people diagnosed with the disease surviving for ten or more years.
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