There was a day on the children's cancer ward in Edinburgh when Kira Noble saw a young girl in a bed next to her hitting her head with her hands.

The girl's distraught mother tried to stop her, anxiously asking her why she kept doing it.

It was Kira who stepped forward with the answer.

"Well, the feelings in your head when going through chemo is like hell on earth," she said to the mother. "You just want to get rid of it."

Kira knew the feelings well. There were days and nights when she'd want to hit her head too.

She had been 11-years-old when the right side of her abdomen had first started to hurt.

It was a stabbing pain, and sometimes she would even vomit. At school in Edinburgh, she started to get breathless. A talented netball player, she was eventually moved to a different position, a less challenging one, as it became harder to breath.

Her mother, Aud, took her to their GP. Growing pains, it was suggested, perhaps something hormonal.

The stabbing continued. So did their trips to the doctor. Finally, after seven months, in July 2014, a full blood count was taken. There was something unusual, signs of possible coeliac disease the doctors suggested, but they wanted to be sure.

Kira was referred to gastroenterology and they asked to do an ultrasound just as a precaution. High-frequency sound waves rebounded over her abdomen to create an image of what was beneath her skin.

Flickering on the screen in front of them the doctors saw a large mass. It was huge, spread out and lurking across Kira's slender frame.

An MRI and a biopsy confirmed all the fears they had - it was a tumour.

"It really was huge," says Aud. "Around two litres in your mind's eye."

The doctors gave it a name - neuroblastoma - a word which sounded like a dangerous bomb. It went alongside 'cancer' - a word which crept and crawled and did not fight fair.

"I remember before she was diagnosed, I said to my husband that I thought there was something in there and she's disturbing it," says Aud.

"I was thinking of a hernia or something, you never in your wildest dreams think it will be cancer."

Six rounds of chemotherapy followed and then major abdominal surgery.

Like a battle plan, the chemo was the front line of soldiers going in to force back and shrink the size of the enemy forces.

The surgery was the battle tank, rolling in after them to subdue what remained.

Even at that point the actual tumour was encased in major blood vessels. It would be too difficult to get it all, but Kira went through radiotherapy and a powerful drug to get at what remained.

The drug was like a power shot of vitamin A, blasting the tumour cells into submission.

The battle over, Kira went into remission. Just 12 weeks later she relapsed. The tumour had started to grow.

"I didn't really know what to expect at first," says Kira. "I wasn't upset when I first heard it was cancer because I already had thought well, what else could it be?

"I coped quite well with the first treatment. I just took it bit by bit, day by day."

The second time round though, Kira knew what to expect. The most difficult challenges in life can become that much harder when you know exactly how much they will hurt.

This time she had four rounds of chemotherapy, a harsher dose. The battle had escalated inside her and more powerful weapons were needed.

Second major abdominal surgery followed, this time the tumour was in her pelvic area and the tanks were sent in again under the command of some of the world's best surgeons.

They took out what they could, followed by more high dose chemo and a stem cell transplant.

It was a very intense treatment which ended in August 2016.

Kira reached remission for a second time and the small part of the original tumour that was left inside her, the part the surgeons had been unable to get in her abdomen, lay dormant.

"It seemed to be dead," says her mother.

Ten months later, just before Kira's 14th birthday, they discovered that it wasn't. The tumour had started to grow.

Kira went in for her third major surgery - a third battle where surgeons spent nine hours trying to get the cancerous monster out of her.

But after years of chemotherapy, the tumour had become hardened, glue-like and stuck inside her.

They deemed it to be too life threatening to remove it but it was life threatening to leave it in too.

"It's like when you have a weed in your garden, unless you take it all out it's going to come back," says Aud.

"We absolutely need this tumour to come out."

Neuroblastoma is a particularly aggressive form of childhood cancer and the most common cancer outside the brain in children under 5 years old.

The survival rate for relapsed neuroblastoma is less than 10% and this statistic worsens every time the cancer comes back. There are around 100 new cases of neuroblastoma in the UK every year.

Kira's last surgery was in January 2018. Doctors have suggested a new treatment plan to have drugs injected into her body that would directly target the tumour.

But she will still need successful surgery to happen if her life is to be saved.

Her mother, after years of research into her daughter's illness, knew of one team who could give them hope - the neuroblastoma doctors at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.

Experts - including five board-certified oncologists and five nurse practitioners singularly focus on treating neuroblastoma - working as a team to give children like Kira the best possible outcome.

Aud wrote to them, begging them to look at her daughter's case notes. Could they find a way? Could they treat her?

It was a very difficult few months, says Aud, waiting for an answer.

"The angst, I almost felt like I wanted to rock myself in a corner, it was awful," she says. "They could have said no, it's not possible."

They didn't. The team said yes.

All the family need now is to pay for it. They now have just a few weeks to raise the £340k needed to pay for the treatment.

Even in 2018, unfortunately, there is a price on a child's life.

"It's been hard, but you know, this is our big chance. This is Kira's big chance," says Aud.

Friends and family want Kira to have that chance too. With support from the charity Solving Kids Cancer they have been donating money to help fund the teenager's treatment.

Complete strangers have donated too. Together more than £90,000 has been raised but more is desperately needed for the surgery to go ahead.

"It's very generous of everyone to help me," says Kira shyly. "To know that everyone is behind you makes you know you'll be fine."

Kira is about to go through another round of chemo once she has gained enough strength to take it on.

She has painful adhesions from her previous surgeries and is still not eating real food yet to allow her gut to rest.

"I need to get this out, to get back to normal and have a normal life," says Kira.

"It's been hell. When I relapsed the first time it was hard on me. The third time was harder.

"Knowing what's going to happen, it's not easy. I knew I'd lose my hair again. That I wouldn't be able to see my friends."

"It's not exactly what I want to do, to have another surgery again because I've just had one," she adds.

"But if it saves my life then I'll go for it. I want to be here. I know what I want to be when I'm older. I just want to get there and do it."

Kira has dreams of becoming a professional wrestler.

"It's quite ambitious and people always look surprised when I tell them," she says grinning.

The family have rushed to get their passports renewed so they're ready to go when the final call comes through from New York.

"There is hope," says Aud. "There is hope and that is great."

As soon as the final costings are known, an urgent appeal will be launched to try and gather in the funds needed to get Kira to the surgeons she needs.

"It's definitely hard, but you get through it and eventually you see the light and you come out the other end," says Kira.

"But obviously I've seen the light, come out the other end and then gone back in a few times.

"This time though," she says smiling, "I'm going to go right through."

To help fund Kira's treatment you can donate here online or you can text KIRA89 and your amount £1 - £10 to 70070. You can also follow Kira's journey on her Kira the Machine Facebook page.

Broadcast report by STV Louise Scott