A mum has revealed how she discovered her toddler’s ‘terrible twos’ actually had a much more sinister cause.
Alicia Bridge’s two-year-old daughter Ada began to have meltdowns, often screaming and crying for an hour at a time, which the mum put down to her age.
Even doctors initially thought Ada’s unusual behaviour was down to the so-called terrible twos, but a blood test revealed the shocking news that the little girl had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia – a form of blood cancer.
“I felt devastated and hopeless,” 27-year-old Alicia, from Freeport, Illinois, US, told Need To Know.
“Nobody expects their kid to have cancer.
“My first thought was that she was going to die.”
Alicia says Ada’s symptoms started in November 2025, when she would grow “really tired” and “only wanted to lay down”.
She said: “She stopped fighting us on her naps and would go to bed early, even when she took a nap during the day.
“Doing simple activities would tire her out easily.
“She would complain about her legs hurting, even on a quick grocery run, she would often ask me to carry her, where before she was sick, she would be running up and down the aisles while I tried to chase her.
“During play dates, instead of interacting with her friends, she would want to sit in my lap or just lay down on the ground.”
Ada also began to bruise easily and suffered a huge bruise on her head after another child threw a toy car at her, which only got worse when she hit her head again days later.
Alicia, a stay-at-home mum, says one of the clearest signs something was wrong was Ada’s skin tone – which had become “so pale that she looked like she had a yellow tint to her”.
Alicia initially put Ada’s irritability down to her age, and even a delayed response to having a little brother, who was six months old at the time.
She added: “Ada would have a lot of meltdowns – which is normal for her age, but these meltdowns were not normal for Ada.
“She would cry and scream for an hour and there wasn’t anything that we could do to calm her down.
“These meltdowns were typically before going to an activity like ballet or gymnastics and so I think she was experiencing bone pain and she knew going to something like this would cause her pain.
“She would have one of these meltdowns once a day.”
Ada was taken to the doctor in December 2025 as Alicia was concerned about the meltdowns and believed her daughter may have a UTI.
While she was assured Ada “looked great” and the behaviour was likely due to her age, Alicia took her to see a pediatrician two weeks later due to how pale her daughter had become.
Alicia requested a blood test for Ada – and later that day received a call telling her to go straight to hospital.
She said: “We went to the ER not knowing what we were getting into.
“During that time, they took her blood and threw out the dreaded C-word.
“Ada’s blood levels were dangerously low and she needed multiple blood and platelet transfusions.”
The family spent the night in hospital and woke the next morning to be told Ada had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL), an aggressive, fast-growing blood cancer that starts in the bone marrow and affects white blood cells.
Ada spent eight days in hospital as doctors worked to get her healthy enough to begin treatment, which has included six initial medications, steroids, chemotherapy, as well as blood and platelet transfusions.
Alicia says the treatment has been tough on Ada, causing a range of side effects.
She added: “The steroids that she took daily would make her extremely hungry and irritable.
“It also caused facial swelling and muscle weakness.
“The muscle weakness in her legs made it so that she couldn’t walk.
“It felt like her personality was completely gone because she didn’t want to do anything.”
Ada’s treatment also included weekly lumbar punctures, as well as immunotherapy, which involved being on continuous medication for 28 days.
The now-three-year-old is due to start a more intense chemotherapy treatment in the coming weeks, before another round of immunotherapy.
Alicia said: “Treatment has been hard.
“It’s hard to see your child in pain every day and see her go through hard things.
“As a parent, I wish I could go through this for her.
“During things like port access, where they stab a needle in her and we have to hold her down while she screams ‘why are you hurting me’ it breaks my heart.
“My husband and I often think ‘why did this have to happen to our child’.”
Ada is currently responding well to treatment with minimal side effects and Alicia says they hope it will stay that way.
She added: “These children deserve to have a cure.
“They deserve treatment that isn’t so harsh; safer treatments shouldn’t be a dream.
“You never know what it is like to have a child with cancer until you are going through it.
“And if you think you are being helpful to them you could probably do so much more.”
READ MORE: Woman, 26, must carry ’emergency SALT’ at all times – or her heart ‘starts getting the shakes’
