Girl, 11, diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer after doctors dismissed symptoms as tonsilitis

A UK girl has been diagnosed with an aggressive childhood cancer after doctors dismissed her symptoms as tonsillitis.Armaie Burrows-Pitt, 11, had been experiencing extreme tiredness and a loss of appetite while on vacation in Devon, England back in May.General practitioners reassured her mom Nikki and stepdad Andy it was tonsillitis and prescribed her antibiotics to clear it up, saying she was “perfectly fit and healthy.”But when she failed to improve, Nikki rushed Armaie, who is known to her family as Melly, to Warwick Hospital in Warwick and demanded a blood test.Doctors carried out further tests, believing she could be suffering from sepsis, tuberculosis or an infection caught from a family vacation in Egypt in February.But after 15 days in the hospital, she was transferred to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, where doctors eventually diagnosed her with Burkitt lymphoma — a rare and aggressive form of childhood cancer.Mom-of-two Nikki, 38, said: “We went to Devon at the end of May and she had us all worried as we could see she was going downhill.“She was tired and didn’t want to play much.She would take herself off to the corner of the park.“That all started at the end of May.

Then on May 31 my mom took her to Warwick A&E.“She didn’t want to talk, walk or eat — she just wanted to lie down.“She got told it was just a viral infection at Warwick, then I took her to a GP [general practitioner] on June 2 and the doctors told me it was tonsillitis.“I was told she was perfectly fit and healthy by the GP, but we knew she wasn’t as she’s such a fit and active young girl who’s full of energy usually.“Then I took her back to Warwick to be told it was tonsillitis again and to finish the antibiotics, but we knew it was something more.”Nikki said she knew Armaie wasn’t just suffering from a virus as the 11-year-old gymnast was left virtually bed-bound and unable to eat.She thought maybe it could have been a gymnastics injury she suffere...