Family's heartbreaking farewell to girl, 6, who fought so hard against all odds

The family of ‘beautiful and loving’ Isabelle Grundy have paid a heartbreaking farewell to a little girl who fought so bravely against cancer in Royal Manchester Children's Hospital.

Isabelle passed away last Monday afternoon (September 12) at the age of just six-years-old. She had battled with a rare and aggressive form of cancer.

The youngster, from Thornton Cleveleys in Lancashire was diagnosed with stage 4 neuroblastoma, a type of childhood cancer, in the summer of 2021 after a lump was discovered in her stomach. The diagnosis, which has a 50 per cent survival rate, was followed by intensive treatment including chemotherapy and blood transplants, LancsLive reports.

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A huge appeal had been launched to help her get special treatment in America to ensure the best chance of survival with over £237 000 raised by the generous community but she sadly relapsed in June, and passed away last week. Her grieving father, Blaine Grundy, 36, said it was during a recent family holiday in the Lake District that he began to notice she was deteriorating.

He told LancsLive: "While we were there, that was the point where I noticed that something wasn’t right. She was waking up at night and going from having Calpol just at night to having it four times a day.

“I remember clear as day, waking up in the middle of the night, and I felt a presence, and she was there. She touched my foot because she was sitting on the floor next to the bed in the lodge, and I jumped and took her to get some medication for her headache. She leant against a wall, and she was wobbly.

"She was so expressive, and she said my words, daddy, my words are jumbled in my