“We sat him on the bed and knew that something wasn’t right,” Louisa Shilleto said of her 2-year-old son, Charlie
A 2-year-old boy was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer after his parents spotted him turning an alarming shade of blue while in the bath at home.
Louisa Shilleto noticed her 2-year-old son Charlie’s chest turning blue during his bath time in early December 2025. She then checked him over and discovered a lump under his arm and rushed him to the hospital, The Yorkshire Post reported.
“I noticed that the veins on Charlie’s chest were really blue. It stood out quite a lot,” Louisa, 37, told the outlet. “[We] knew that something wasn’t right, so we scanned the rest of his body [and] noticed the lump under his arm. It was quite big and had seemingly come out of nowhere.”
Charlie’s parents took him to the Hull Royal Infirmary in England, where another lump on his neck was discovered the next morning. Doctors revealed that Charlie had an aggressive tumor pushing against his lung, and he was sent to Leeds General Infirmary for life-saving treatment, per The Yorkshire Post.
Charlie was eventually diagnosed with stage four metastatic embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma on Dec. 17, 2025, according to a GoFundMe established to help the family through financial hardship during Charlie’s treatment.
Metastatic embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma is a rare type of cancer, also known as soft tissue sarcoma, that develops in your skeletal muscles. It mostly affects children and teenagers, with between 400 and 500 people in the U.S. diagnosed with the disease each year, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
“It was quickly established that Charlie’s primary tumor was very large and took up most of the left side of his chest,” Charlie’s aunt, Alysha Curtis, wrote on the GoFundMe. “It had also metastasized to the surrounding lymph nodes under his armpit and in his neck.”
According to Curtis, the aggressive tumor “caused a hole in his left lung,” causing it to collapse. Charlie then underwent medical treatment, which led to his diagnosis and saved his life.
Louisa told The Yorkshire Post that she had a panic attack when she was told about her boy’s diagnosis. “I couldn’t breathe and I was shaking like a leaf,” she said.
Charlie immediately started chemotherapy and is currently on his second cycle. While he has responded well to the treatment, it has also had a significant impact on him, Louisa told The Yorkshire Post.
“It comes with a lot of sickness; he has ulcers in his mouth, and his walking has changed because one of the drugs affects the nerves in his legs,” she said of the treatment. “He’s lost a lot of weight and he’s very pale. But because he’s so young, he just cracks on.”