When Heather Barlow was seven doctors discovered a tennis ball-sized tumour on her kidney.

Her condition led to a year's chemotherapy at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Headington where she and her family watched the Oxford Children's Hospital take shape.

Now her family, including mum and dad Debbie, 39, and Simon, 41, sister Emma, 15, and brother Jonathan, five, of Portway, Banbury, are supporting the £15m campaign to complete the dedicated paediatric unit, which is due to open in January.

Childminder Mrs Barlow said: "The first time we visited the JR they hadn't even started clearing the trees from the site.

"Getting all the services together will be so good. It will mean not having to trek to different areas when your child is not feeling very well.

"Oxford's paediatric team is terrific at what it does, but having better facilities will have a really positive effect on the children."

Hill View Primary School pupil Heather, now 10, was diagnosed with a Wilm's tumour after blood was found in her urine.

The condition is a cancer common in children and can start to develop before a baby is born. Treatment gives sufferers more than an 80 per cent chance of survival.

Within a week after being seen by her GP and having tests at the Horton Hospital in Banbury Heather had been referred to the JR for chemotherapy. Six weeks later, when the lump had shrivelled to the size of a golf ball, surgeons removed it in a two-hour operation.

Heather then endured chemotherapy every two weeks, to ensure the cancer had been eradicated, which left her without any hair and away from her school friends for most of the year.

Mrs Barlow said: "It's so frightening when you're first told. You don't really believe it, because you see that type of thing on television affecting someone else, somewhere else.

"The first few months of treatment drained Heather a bit, but by Christmas she got back to being her old self. She's such a positive character. She just got on with it and still did dance classes and Brownies."

Three years on, Heather is back at school and feeling fit and well. She said: "I've watched the children's hospital being built and I can't wait to see what it's like inside."