大象传媒

My name is Ben, I'm 16 years old and I have chronic myeloid leukaemia. I go to Brayton College and I am in year 11 studying for my GCSEs. I enjoy school but I hate coursework. I would like to go to college and do 'A' levels, I quite fancy Chemistry, Biology and IT and then going on to university. In my spare time I enjoy hanging out with my mates, watching films and going to the cinema and gaming.

In May 2008 my mum took me to the doctors because I had a dodgy stomach. The doctor did a blood test to see if I was anaemic or had wheat intolerance. I had lost weight and was tired but didn't think it was unusual. One side of my stomach felt hard and later we found out my spleen was massive. The next morning I went to school and then was told my dad was coming to pick me up. We went back to the doctors and we were told that they weren't certain but they thought I may have leukaemia.

Ben and the family dog "Smartie".

We went home and dad phoned mum at work and she came home and mad picked up my sister, Lucy, from school. Together we went to St James Hospital in Leeds, I wasn't sure what was really going on but I realised it was bad and I was scared. We all were.听

I spent two weeks in hospital, Doug, the drip, became my best mate, he followed me round everywhere. The nurses were really cool and the doctors explained everything that was going on. The teenage cancer unit at Jimmy's is quite a cool place, there鈥檚 always loads going on.

It was a great day when I came home. I then had to take a tablet a day which was the chemotherapy and life returned pretty much to normal with visits to the hospital once every four weeks. We all thought this treatment would control the leukaemia but we knew it wouldn't cure it. In January we found out the medication wasn't working and my doctor said the plan needed to change and I would need a bone marrow transplant.

The search is on!