A YOUNG cancer victim is celebrating the New Year with the news she is in remission and can return to school.

Brave Deanna Radcliffe, five, is overjoyed to rejoin her classmates at Britannia Primary in Bacup after spending just two weeks in lessons at the school during the whole of 2001.

The tot attended the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital in Pendlebury this week and underwent a chest X-ray before her delighted parents Liz and Paul were told the good news.

Liz, of Regent Street, Bacup, said: "We are delighted. We only wish we could have had that news before Christmas, but it has certainly made our New Year. We hope the next 12 months brings a lot more happiness to this household."

Deanna was diagnosed with an inoperable tumour behind her right eye last April and underwent a course of chemotherapy to shrink it before an intensive course of radiotherapy in Manchester's Christie Hospital.

The radiotherapy finished less than 24 hours before charity Wish Upon A Star jetted Deanna and her mum off to Lapland for a very important date with Santa Claus, but after finishing the treatment, she had to be rushed into hospital with an eye infection on December 27.

Liz said: "Her hair is starting to come back slowly but she still wears her bandanas because she is self-conscious.

"Last week she asked her dad, 'Just because I have no hair I am still a little girl,' and then I saw her with a mirror in front of her face looking at her eyes.

"She was saying that she had marks on the white of her eye but I think it is because she still has no eyelashes or eyebrows on the right hand side but we have been told they should grow back."

Her hair is still fuzzy and fine and a square patch on the back of her head where the radiotherapy was administered has yet to start growing.

Deanna still has her Hickman line in, which is used to administer the chemotherapy, and once that is removed Liz said she will start to accept the treatment is over.

Kind hearts raised £10,000 to pay for a family holiday to Disney World, Florida, where Deanna will also swim with dolphins.

Her sister Danielle, nine, is delighted to take Deanna to school and said they play together at break times. Danielle is also be starring in the Bacup Youth Theatre pantomime Aladdin which will be shown on five nights with three matinee performances.

Liz said: "Danielle loves anything to do with the theatre and she gets a real buzz from it.

"It also helped her last year to be able to cope with what was happening to Deanna."