A TEENAGE girl who battled cancer is to be the face of a national campaign to raise money to fight the disease.

Sophia Steinsberg, of Radley, was diagnosed in December 2008 with bone cancer, but following months of chemotherapy treatment she has been told by doctors the disease is unlikely to return.

The 13-year-old’s picture is featuring on collection tins in all Tesco stores after the supermarket chose her to front a campaign aimed at raising millions of pounds for the CLIC Sargent charity.

Sophia said: “I’ve seen my face on the tins in Tesco and it was weird, but I’m proud. The CLIC Sargent nurses did a lot for me when I was ill.”

Her mother, Caroline, a teacher at Manor Preparatory School, near Abingdon, said: “We’d like to say a huge thank you to the hospital staff and CLIC Sargent nurses.

“Hopefully, this campaign will help their good work.”

Sofia first realised something was wrong after experiencing pains and swelling in her left knee on a walking holiday. Her family put it down to growing pains but made a precautionary visit to her GP at the Malthouse Surgery, Abingdon, who referred her to the John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford.

Following an X-ray, the doctors diagnosed an osteosarcoma in Sophia’s left knee. They said the condition affected only five children a year in the UK.

The day before Christmas Eve Sophia, a pupil at the School of St Helen and Katharine, was put on a Hickman line, a self-contained catheter which administers drugs as well as taking blood samples.

The day after Boxing Day, Sophia went on to the Kamran ward at the JR for her first session of chemotherapy. Sophia had six five-week sessions and would spend three weeks of each session in hospital.

During that time she would attend school when she could and her friends were very supportive when her hair fell out in February.

She said: “Losing my hair didn’t affect me. I was given a wig and my mum said she felt guilty doing her hair in the morning. But I think it looks better short and it’s grown back curlier.”

On March 20, she had a six-hour limb salvage operation in which surgeons removed the bone and replaced it with a metal prosthetic which doctors will extend with magnets as she gets older.

She said: “I was lucky because if they had hit a nerve during that operation they would have had to have amputated my leg.”

Due to the chemotherapy, the leg did not heal properly and she had a further operation in October to graft skin from her side on to the knee.

Her last chemotherapy session was in September.