Marathon may save my life

By Sunday afternoon, most of the 33,000 people expected to compete in this year's Flora London Marathon will be looking forward to soaking in a warm bath before putting their feet up to reflect how glad they are that it's all over. For 18-year-old Andy Jackson, however, crossing the finish line will mark the beginning of a far more gruelling ordeal.

Andy has leukaemia and, within days of recovering from running 26.2 miles, he faces major surgery, a stemcell transplant which is vital if he is to see another marathon.

His nightmare began last September when he made what he thought would be a routine visit to his GP. Since sitting his A-levels earlier in the summer, he had been suffering from uncharacteristic headaches and extreme tiredness, but he shrugged it off as exam stress.

"I had a busy few months," he says. "First there were the exams, then I went on a lads' holiday to celebrate. I felt really knackered, but thought nothing of it. My mum insisted I went to the GP. In the end I gave in and went for a check-up."

Within hours his world had been turned upside down - and he was being rushed by ambulance from home in New Malden, Surrey, to see the cancer specialists at Hammersmith Hospital.

An eye test had revealed irregularities at the back of his eye. After a while the specialists told Andy he had late-stage chronic myeloid leukaemia, and must stay in hospital for urgent treatment. "One minute I thought I was fit and healthy, just exhausted," recalls Andy. "The next I had cancer of the blood. I couldn't take it in."

In fact, his leukaemia was so advanced that consultants think he had been suffering for at least a year. "They said my eye was producing 550 white blood cells per millilitre of blood, compared with 5-10 white cells in a healthy person," Jackson explains.

"That had made the blood too thick which had caused my headaches and dizziness. My spleen was also enlarged, another sign that the disease was in a late stage."

Chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) is a slowly progressing form of the disease which can go unnoticed until it reaches an accelerated phase when symptoms become all too apparent.

Left untreated, CML can develop into acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), a more virulent form of the disease which quickly becomes life-threatening. Had he delayed medical attention any longer, Andy was told, his condition would almost certainly have progressed to AML.

In what has to be the cruellest irony, Jackson became the second member of his immediate family to be told they have cancer in a matter of months. His mother, Sandy, had learned that the bowel cancer for which she had undergone chemotherapy, had spread to her liver and that she only has months left to live.

Mum's illness had a huge impact on all of us," says Andy. "We all changed the way we thought about everything because we didn't know what might happen tomorrow. When I was told I had cancer, too, all the worst scenarios went through my head because I had seen it with mum.

"You think about the treatment, your hair falling out, the special diet and the drugs, and you wonder if you can cope. I kept thinking, 'What have we done wrong as a family to deserve this?'. I was very, very low."

But as he embarked on a course of chemotherapy drugs and the search began for a bone-marrow donor to provide the stem cells required to save his life, Andy's despair helped him find an incredible inner strength and sense of purpose. "For mum's and for my own sanity, I had to do something positive, to prove something to myself. I'd always wanted to run the London Marathon and I thought now it would be a bigger challenge than ever, so why not?"

Undeterred by the exhausting drug treatment and the scepticism and concern of some doctors, family members and friends, Andy embarked on a training programme just five months ago that would test the healthiest individual to their mental and physical limits.

At Christmas he was informed that a donor match had been found, but he pleaded with specialists to postpone the operation until he had run the marathon.

The effects of marathon-running on the bodies of even finely tuned athletes are extreme. Along with the huge energy demands required to run the distance, competitors are at risk of hyperthermia, a suppressed immune system and many other unpleasant, if temporary side-effects.

For someone in Jackson's condition, training for a marathon seemed an unrealistic goal. Yet, armed with little more than an incredible selfwill, he committed to raising money for two charities - Children with Leukaemia and Leuka 2000 - and began pulling on his running shoes every day. "A lot of people doubted I could run and some, like my mum, were so worried it would do me harm," he says.

"But I was always optimistic. It was something I really wanted to achieve and, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking that I might never get another chance."

Several times a week, on cold, dark evenings, Jackson has been clocking up mile after mile around local parks or occasionally on the treadmill at his gym. Sometimes he is on his feet for more than two hours. "I've had some real low points where I have felt exhausted, but I've kept myself going and convinced myself that that is probably how everyone who is training for the event is feeling. Although my mum is still very worried about the effects it is having, my doctors can see that running has become my focus and taken my mind of the illness."

Unlike the rest of Sunday's runners, however, Andy knows that as soon as he passes the finishing line his attention must shift to preparing his body for its greatest challenge yet.

As soon as he recovers from the race he will check into Hammersmith Hospital, where he will spend up to three months as his cancerous blood cells are blasted away and replaced by healthy bone marrow.

But, he points out, he will do so in the knowledge that he has achieved something extraordinary. If he finishes - "there is no doubt in my mind that I will" - he will raise more thanf £6,000, hopefully to help others with leukaemia face their own battles with as much dignity as he has.

Although the transplant operation will be traumatic and physically draining, Andy is optimistic about taking up his place on a history and politics degree course at Exeter University next autumn.

Certainly, living with the disease appears to have given him a perspective on life that is unusual in someone so young.

"In some ways it is one of the better things that has happened to me. I was drifting through life without realising it. Now I take nothing for granted," he says.

"And I know there are people far worse off than me, even in my own family.

"Unlike Mum's, my cancer has a defined beginning, middle and end. I can now see a future without it - which is more than she can. "I consider myself very fortunate in that I can still achieve things, and still prove a point."