Teenage cancer mum dies

A teenager who delayed her cancer treatment until her baby was born has died in hospital in London.

Former beauty queen Kelly Byrne decided not to have an abortion and so gave up the chance of continuing chemotherapy and radiation therapy which kept her leukaemia at bay.

The 19-year-old died at University College Hospital with her boyfriend and the father of her child, Geoff Winnington, at her side along with members of her family. Kelly agreed to undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy only after she gave birth to her son, Logan, last August.

She first developed leukaemia at the age of 13. Doctors hoped then that she had beaten the disease but it returned.

At the end of last year a worldwide search for a bone marrow donor was successful and on Christmas Day she went into hospital for a transplant. It proved to be not enough to save her.

Kelly, who was a beauty queen in her home town of Braintree, Essex, two years ago, decided to have her baby because she knew that the damage the cancer therapy would do to her reproductive-system would almost certainly prevent her having another child.

She said of her decision to go ahead: "It meant that I had to stop having the treatment that was keeping me alive. The doctors were against my decision but I knew this was my only chance to become a mother."

Late last year, she and her family were thrilled when, after months of searching, the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust found a young male donor in America with an almost perfect tissue match.

She described the whole experience as being "something of a miracle".

Not only did she become a mother, but the hunt for a marrow donor also resulted in her being reunited with her estranged father.

Kelly described her son as "the best reason I have for fighting cancer".

"There was a chance the cancer would grow so quickly that I would die before Logan was born. But I took the risk. I couldn't let them kill my baby," she said.