Fabulous Frank. Our bundle of joy. Our happy-go-lucky boy.

Frank was so full of life, so full of energy. He made us laugh everyday with his quirky sense of humour and his big, cheeky grin.

Frank loved so much about life. Family and friends were the most important things to him. He loved all the simple things that every 14 year old boy enjoys - sleepovers with friends where they forced themselves to stay up all night, eating buckets of sweets and watching horror movies, playing in the park, kicking a ball, going to the cinema. And then there was Nando’s. Frank loved a Nando’s with his mates.

Frank loved his sport too. He showed great potential at golf and tennis as well as football, swimming and netball. He was really looking forward to starting basketball at secondary school. He was an avid Chelsea supporter and often saw them play. They never lost when Frank was there so he decided that he was definitely their lucky mascot.

From a very young age Frank loved theatre. He loved watching live shows. He was intuitive beyond his years, loving plays and TV dramas that we never thought he’d understand or sit through. He was often the youngest person in the theatre but always one of the most engaged.

In April 2016, just as Frank was looking forward to the next phase in his life at secondary school, our world collapsed when he was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. He was just 11 years old.

The next 12 months was tougher for Frank than anything we could ever have imagined: 14 exhausting cycles of chemotherapy, 2 months of proton therapy in the US and an horrific 8 hour operation to remove the tumour and a substantial part of his pelvis.

We knew we had to be strong for Frank but it worked the other way round too. His positivity, resilience and amazing character kept us all going through some very tough times.

His raw courage in learning to walk again after his operation and the way he quietly got about rebuilding his life and getting back to school were awe inspiring. 

Then in September 2017, after just 5 months in remission, we found out the disease had returned. Frank was confronted with further endless cycles of chemotherapy and radiotherapy with just a tiny chance that it could cure him. Somehow he found the strength to keep going and the spirit to remain cheerful. He just wanted to behave and be treated like any other teenage boy. If anyone asked him how he was feeling they always received the same answer, ‘I’m good thanks’, accompanied by a huge grin.

We enjoyed a brilliant Christmas together but by the middle of January 2019 Frank’s health was failing fast. Our beautiful boy’s short life ended on 9^th February 2019. We are left devastated but immensely proud.

Ewing sarcoma most commonly affects children and young adults aged 10-25 years old and makes up about 1.5% of all childhood cancers. A child, teenager or adult is diagnosed with primary bone cancer every 10 minutes somewhere in the world, but primary bone cancer received just 0.028% of funding from the major UK cancer charities in 2018/19 and shockingly their investment in the disease dropped by 17% to a 17-year low. Treatment protocols are out of date and gruelling. It’s a scandal that the lack of investment means that neither treatment nor survival rates have improved in over 30 years and that there’s so little chance of survival if it returns.

Frank would never have wanted any child to suffer as he suffered. If his death is to have any meaning at all, it needs to be to help people who are diagnosed in the future by raising funds that can be invested in much needed research.