An eight-year-old girl has died of an aggressive cancer her doctors initially wrote off as growing pains.

Darcy McGuire battled chordoma for most of her short life, but wasn't diagnosed until January this year. By then, it was too late.

She was born with congenital kyphosis and had to undergo two major operations in Edinburgh as a baby to fuse her vertebrae and straighten her spine.

When she was three, her mum Carol Donald, 38, noticed a lump on her daughter's spine. However a specialist reassured the Glenrothes family it was just a side-effect of the fusion operations and nothing to worry about.

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The lump didn't go away and Darcy began to experience constant pain. She was repeatedly taken to her GP and to various specialists, but was told it was "just growing pains".

It wasn't until January, when Darcy began falling over on a daily basis, that she was finally diagnosed with chordoma – a very rare and aggressive form of spinal cancer that affects only one in 20 million children every year.

At that point she had three large tumours on her spine and sacrum. The cancer also spread to her ribs, lungs, skull, hand, arms and legs.

Soon after being diagnosed, Darcy and her family were told the cancer was terminal and it was too late to do anything about it.

She died on Sunday morning, which her mother said happened "very peacefully".

"Darcy was one in a million and a huge part of my heart will never heal," Ms Donald wrote on the 'Darcy Mae's Dreams' Facebook page she'd set up to support her daughter.

"I'm so grateful to have had 8 amazing years with her, she has taught me so much in the last year and the strength she has maintained throughout is what will keep me strong."

In October Ms Donald, who has four other children, revealed that Darcy was involved in planning her own funeral.

"When your child is given a terminal diagnosis, they don't have a choice or say in their death – but I was determined to give Darcy something she could control," she told The Daily Record.

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She said she was furious that her daughter's illness was misdiagnosed by so many medical professionals for so long.

"I was so angry and frustrated because I always knew, as her mum, that something was being missed," she said.

"If this had been found earlier, I have no doubt Darcy could have stood a chance at beating this cruel disease."

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