“MUMMY am I going to die?” This was seven-year-old Kerri Roche’s question to her mother, Trudi, after fearless Oscar Knox lost his battle to aggressive cancer, neuroblastoma, earlier this year.

Kerri had genuine reasons for asking her question.

The brave little girl from Trory was fighting her own battle with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia.

But unlike Oscar, Kerri’s prognosis is a more positive one.

Now in remission, she will continue her course of treatment until November next year.

And while the realities of living with cancer are not completely behind her yet, she and her family are looking ahead to the future with excitement.

The Roche family travelled to Disneyland, Paris last month to celebrate the positive strides Kerri is making on the road to a full recovery.

She had been nominated for the trip of a lifetime by her primary school, Holy Trinity in Enniskillen, through the Make A Wish Foundation.

“The last year has been a rollercoaster for everyone,” said her mother, Trudi, “But we have found a sort of normality now that Kerri is in remission. So it was lovely that all five of us could go away on the holiday together. We were constantly on the go, but it was also very relaxing.” Kerri initially showed symptoms of her illness when she started began suffering from headaches and feeling tired.

“She had just started back at school, so we put it down to going into P3 with the longer days at school,” Trudi explained, “We gave it two weeks.” But after two weeks Kerri was no better.

And on a family day out it became more and more apparent to Trudi and husband, Stephen, that something was very wrong with their little girl.

“Kerri wasn’t able to go on the bouncy castle when we were out that day -- she is normally the first one on and the last one off!

“She is a very active child. “We took her to our GP that Monday morning.” Kerri was referred straight away to the Children’s Ward at South West Acute Hospital.

Within a couple of hours Kerri’s blood tests delivered the worrying news.

“Doctors told us they thought she had leukaemia,” said Trudi, “But that further tests needed to be done.

Her platelets were so low that she had to have a blood transfusion.

And when she was transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast she had to have another.

By Wednesday that same week, they received the official diagnosis they had been dreading.

But the family hadn’t much time to gather their thoughts before Kerri was placed on an intense course of chemotherapy for the first month of her treatment.

At the end of the first month doctors conducted tests to see how Kerri was reacting to her chemo.

Her system showed very few leukaemia cells.

As a result she was classed in remission but Kerri still has to continue with the various other types of phases of her treatment.

“Kerri’s full treatment plan is two years and two months,” Trudi explained, “We would hope she would be finished at the end of November next year.

“Her initial chemo was a steroid which makes her very grumpy.

“She still gets them every month and she gets very tired and very hungry. She is like a different child the weeks that she has to take them. But we know how to deal with that now.” The first few months of Kerri’s treatment were a huge adjustment for her and the rest of the family.

“At the start it was very hard on her and hard on us too.

“The poor child was only in hospital a day or two and she had to have three to four different medications.

“She had to have a nasal tube put in to take her meds for the first couple of weeks. It was quite traumatic for her at the start.

“And it was very difficult to try and explain to her.

“We hadn’t got our own heads around it at that stage but the Royal were very good -- they explained to her better than we did at the start!” But for Kerri, the most traumatic experience of fighting off her cancer was the reality of losing her hair.

“For a girl of six years old, it was just devastating,” Trudi recalled, “She had very long blonde curly hair.

“She didn’t even want me talking to other people about it or she would have burst into floods of tears.

“She just loved her blonde hair and her curls, and her wee sister.

“When she was completely bald, we drove her mad because we would rub her head -- it was just so soft!

“Now that her own hair is growing back, it is darker and softer, almost like baby hair.” Her twin brother, Ryan, also struggled with the initial stages of Kerri’s diagnosis and treatment.

“At the start I would have spent most of the time in hospital with Kerri and then got home on a Saturday for one night with Ryan and Amy,” Trudi explained.

“After that, every time Kerri had to go for a check up he was always afraid that we would end up having to stay up there.

“Ryan suffers from asthma and at the start of her treatment his asthma was terrible.

“The anxiety was bringing it on. But when he started to talk about it a bit, that helped. “I would have found him and Amy very clingy because they weren’t seeing a lot of me or Kerri -- it was quite hard on them.

“Cancer affects everybody in the family unit. But Stephen and my brother were amazing.

“They kept the routine going for Ryan and Amy when I was with Kerri.

“I will never forget the support of family and friends.” Kerri returned to school on a part-time basis in Easter this year.

“When she went back to school she was like a wee celeb! Everyone wanted to talk to her and sit beside her,” said Trudi.

“But she was still very conscious of her hair at that stage. The principal, Mr. Murphy arranged that the children could all wear hats in school.

“So Kerri didn’t feel different. “She didn’t get a wig for a while. But in her own classroom she felt confident enough to take it off and let her friends see her own hair.

“And going back to school in September full-time this year, she felt more confident.” Over the last year Kerri has become very aware of what her cancer means.

“When she was in hospital for four weeks one of the first people to say hello to her was Oscar Knox,” Trudi explained.

“And when he died she had a lot of questions-- ‘Am I going to die?’.

“You have to say: ‘No’.

“You have to be positive and say everything is going to be fine.

“She asked me: ‘Why did he die and why am I not going to?’.

“I told her that he had a tumour and that’s different. It was a simple question for her but a hard one to answer for me.

“She has had to grow up a lot over the last year.

“I have heard her explaining to her brother what is happening to her, to help him understand it all.

“And when I went to her school to speak to her classmates about Kerri’s cancer I realised she had been discussing it all a lot more with her friends than I had thought.

“Her friends asked so many questions -- you wouldn’t believe some of the things in their wee heads. They asked about Oscar too.

“I suppose some of the kids have relatives of their own who have cancer, or who have died from cancer. So they wanted to understand more about it.” Kerri recently met world class golfer, Rory McElroy when he visited Daisy Lodge in Newcastle.

A picture of Rory with Kerri made the front page of the Impartial Reporter last month.

“She was very conscious about what she looked like that day,” Trudi said, “Even now her hair is still quite short.

“She always wears a hairband to show she is a girl, because some times people have commnented: ‘Oh, what lovely boys you have!’, without realising.

“The day she met Rory I had forgotten to bring a hairband for her. She was quite cross!” With Kerri’s treatment having reached the half-way mark, Trudi has returned to work part-time.

“Things are certainly going in the right direction for Kerri, but you are never 100 per cent relaxed.

“Some times it is as if you are on auto-pilot.

“And if her blood level is down a bit, you wonder if she is going to be all right.

“My mood and the whole family’s mood is dependant on what form she is in. And we are very aware there is a risk that she could relapse.

“A few weeks ago Kerri had been complaining that she was tired and had headaches again.

“We started to worry because those were her symptoms initially.

“Her bloods suggest though, that she is all right.

“But you never know what is on down the road. We just all have to hope for the best.”