Joey was diagnosed with brain cancer with only 11 days to live. Five years later, he won the disease and now began a phase that the family never thought possible: he went to school.
© FacebookMirror
07/09/2026
by
News to Minutes
Joey Sharp
Joey Sharp was only 11 days old when he received a diagnosis that he promised to question his whole life. Five years later, the boy survived a cancer and is preparing for a new phase.
39-year-old Sam Sharp gave birth in 2020. One week after birth, Joey had to go back to the hospital because he had a lack of appetite and was losing weight. Penicuik's newborn in Midlothian, Scotland, also began to have intermittent spasms.
In the hospital, the doctors noticed an infection in one of the toenails and this raised suspicions for a more serious health problem. “It was [a stain] so small that it looked like a grain of sand,” the mother recalls.
“ Little did we know that in hours we would be facing a father’s worst nightmare,” Sam adds.
Doctors would take samples of what they suspected to be a tumor and the diagnosis would reveal that it was a glioblastoma, an aggressive and incurable form of brain cancer.
After diagnosis, the baby underwent three brain surgeries and nine rounds of chemotherapy. Joey even became part of clinical trials to better understand how babies react to cancer treatments.
At the end of August 2021, after the last treatment, the family was informed that there were no traces of the disease.
“ We prepared for the fact that it would probably take more surgeries, so hearing those words was overwhelming. For the first time in months, we felt we could finally breathe again”, recalls the mother, quoted by Sky News.
The boy, now five years old, suffered sequelae, including cerebral palsy, has little mobility in his right hand, and has to use a wheelchair for longer distances.
Despite this, he has just completed a feat in his life: it was for the first time for school. His conquest has made everyone proud, since this was a reality that the family had never imagined it would be possible to achieve.
Meanwhile, Joey's mother has been dedicated to various actions aimed at promoting cancer research in babies. He will soon participate in the Edinburgh marathon in order to raise funds for an investigation center and try to find a cure for the glioblastoma.
Sky News reports that Scotland is the first UK nation to have a cancer strategy for children and young people.