A DARWEN couple today paid tribute to their brave teenage daughter who finally lost a four-year battle against the cancer which came back to attack her nine times.

Carmen and Lee Cox, of Ellenshaw Close, said 17-year-old Cheri-Lee "lived her life to the full" despite having nine separate operations to remove cancerous tumours from her body and having to be resuscitated two years ago.

Even a few hours before she died she had been determined to get out of her hospital bed to go home.

Carmen said: "She was very brave and it was because she was so positive that it kept us going. She overcame so much that we didn't really think she was going to die. She always bounced back and even on the morning of her death she was wanting to go home.

"It was a constant battle because the cancer came back nine times. The nurses said she was like a cat with nine lives. It's ironic that she died after the ninth operation."

She added: "All we can do now is give her the best send-off and she would have loved all this attention. She was a drama queen and loved dancing and her fashion. Her spirit was still fighting but unfortunately her body had given up but throughout it all she never wallowed in self-pity."

Cheri-Lee, who was a pupil at Darwen Moorland High School, died in Royal Manchester Children's Hospital, Pendlebury, on Monday, four years after first being diagnosed with a soft tissue cancer, more common in teenage boys.

She discovered a lump near her ribs in 1999 and was told in February 2000 that she had a cancerous tumour which would have to be removed with surgery.

Six months later her stomach became swollen and doctors found a second tumour and Cheri-Lee had to start seven months of chemotherapy which made her long blonde hair fall out.

During the next three years, she had tumours removed from her ovaries - which led to an hysterectomy - from her ribs, her bowel, as well as going through radiotherapy at the Christie Hospital in Manchester.

While undergoing an operation in 2002 on her bowel, doctors found another tumour and she had to have her appendix out.

Carmen said: "We were also told afterwards that she had gone into septic shock and died on the operating table but they managed to resuscitate her. She got to come home for her 16th birthday but on New Year's Eve 2002 she was rushed back when her bowel burst again and at the end of February 2003 she had an operation on her intestines.

"Between May 2003 and 2004 she had a really good year. She took driving lessons and did everything she could. She was a very strong person. She was bright at school and had a couple of speaking parts in the TV programme All Quiet On The Preston Front."

Cheri-Lee went back to hospital in May this year and doctors found a tumour on her spleen. It was removed but they told her she only had five days to live.

She fought back and went on holiday to Skegness with her family last month but fell ill again.

Her parents were told she only had 12 hours to live because she had pneumonia.

The cancer had spread to her liver and she died six days later.

Cheri-Lee also leaves behind two sisters, Sammy-Jo, 14, and Chloe, 12, and her little brother Lee, four.

The family are expecting a large number of friends to attend her funeral on Monday when Cheri-Lee will be taken to St Peter's Church in a horse-drawn carriage, before a burial in Darwen Cemetery at noon.