RUNNING ahead, hand in hand with his big brother Paul, five-year-old Adam Robertson is clearly excited at going to meet his friends at the summer holiday club he attends daily.
To see him bounding along, chatting and laughing, parents Lynn and Scott can hardly believe the energetic youngster is living with a rare and incurable brain cancer.
"He's going to the club, loves being out in the garden and is very active," says
Lynn, of Edinburgh. "Ultimately we know what's going to happen but when you see him running about, you think 'how can it be real?'."
The family was given the devastating news that Adam was suffering from a rare type of brain tumour on April 28 – the day after his brother Marc's eighth birthday.
He had been complaining of headaches for weeks and tests at the Sick Kids Hospital in Edinburgh revealed they were being caused by a tumour pressing on his brain.
Doctors gently told Lynn and Scott, a youth worker, that because the tumour, called pontine glioma, had grown among the normal nerve cells so close to where the brain joins the spinal chord, it was too dangerous to operate.
Only 40 children a year are diagnosed with the condition and Lynn and Scott were told all they could do was try to prolong Adam's life, through a course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
"Adam knows that the treatment is not going to make the tumour go away and I've told him he's going to have that forever," says a tearful Lynn, momentarily letting her guard down. "It's the worst place to get it, a very dangerous area. He's been very unlucky."
Facing the uncomfortable prospect that Adam's health could slide quickly, Lynn and Scott are concentrating on making sure that the remainder of their son's life is as happy and fun-filled as possible.
Next month, the family will become the first to stay at a new respite cottage that has just been revamped by supporters of the Leith-based charity CCLASP.
The community around the family's Craigentinny home has also been fundraising, so Adam and his brothers Paul, ten, Marc, eight, and six-year-old Scott can all visit Legoland at Windsor in September.
Their big-hearted friends also hope to send the family to Disneyland Paris and perhaps even Lapland to meet Santa Claus at Christmas.
"Basically, we've been told to do as much as we can now while Adam's still as active," says Lynn. "We've got to do as much as we can with Adam while he's still fit and able to enjoy it. We want him to have fun experiences and to create some good memories."
Putting a supportive arm around his wife, Scott, 41, adds: "Our plan is to do as much as we can before Christmas because we don't know when his health will dip.
"We want them to have a magical experience and to keep it instilled in the boys that good things happen."
The Robertsons are clearly proud of all their boys – their three-bedroom flat is filled with photos of them growing up.
On the wall is a string of cards sent by well-wishers, including designs penned by the boys' fellow nursery and primary pupils at St Ninian's School.
"When the specialist told us about Adam, we said we didn't want them to hold back or to pussyfoot around us," explains 39-year-old Lynn.
"We said, 'we've got other kids at home so we need to be realistic, we need to know what we're dealing with'. We're the type of people who like to be organised and plan things and when you've got so many kids you need to have routines, so we needed to know how it was going to affect everybody."
For Lynn, Adam's diagnosis brought back the heartbreak of losing her mother Olive to stomach cancer a year earlier.
It had been the 62-year-old's wish to visit her son Craig in South Africa, so Lynn and Scott and their four sons accompanied Olive on the journey. She died just two days after returning.
"Going through the cancer with my mum was almost a preparation for this," says Lynn quietly. "Because my mum lived on her own and she didn't have a carer as such, I was going to doctor and hospital appointments with her."
Recalling Adam's diagnosis, Scott adds: "We were just gobsmacked. It was devastating because you never think, and we had just gone through that with Lynn's mum. We worried about what we would tell the boys and friends and family, and how we would cope."
As a way of keeping their family updated, Lynn started keeping a blog of Adam's treatment and progress. She hopes the online diary will be a comfort to other parents who have children with cancer.
The couple also had to face breaking the news of Adam's condition to Paul, Marc and Scott. To help them explain, they used children's books about cancer and its treatment that were loaned to them by the hospital.
"It took us two weeks to tell them but it was just finding the right time," explains Scott, who is also a coach at Lochend Amateur Boxing Club.
"The books from the hospital helped, but they all have a happy ending. We had to tell them not everybody has a happy ending."
While the family are keen not to dwell on how much longer Adam's good health will last, they are hopeful that a new type of treatment called temezolomide will help prolong his life.
Adam has recently completed a six-week course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy that saw him enduring a general anaesthetic five days a week.
Lynn says Adam, a keen golfer, coped well throughout the treatment, although it understandably made him grumpy at times.
Through it all, Adam was focused on the promise of a holiday and earlier this month, once the treatment was over, the family took a break at the Haggerston Castle resort where the brothers enjoyed bike riding and a wrestling spectacular.
They also visited to Blair Drummond Safari Park after Grassmarket businesses donated raffle prizes to a fundraising drive.
"There's been stacks of support and we're really humbled by it," says Scott. "We feel we need to keep the family strong at the moment and we're building more bonds with the boys because we know what's going to happen.
"You don't expect your child to go before you and that hurts more than you know – to think that this is going to happen because of what he's got – but at the moment our main concern is to make sure that Adam and the other boys have the best time together.
"We've got to be very strong for the boys and we've really got to think about them. If they see us moping about and not doing family things they'll become very low so we're trying to be very upbeat and trying to create some happy times."
