Hello

My name is Thomas Russell and this is the story of my interesting life so far.

I was born on 16th May 2005 to two lovely parents Joanne and David. I also have a brother Harry who is 18 months older than me. Things were going great for a while with my grandparents, aunties, uncles and lots of new friends all trying to figure out who I looked like and giving me lots of attention. Also my brother Harry tried his best to come to terms with the fact that he wasn't going to be the only one getting all the attention any more. I think he got used to it though and started being nice to me and trying to introduce me to people called Barney and Bob the Builder.

Everything was all starting to fall into place as normal until I started getting bad pains in tummy when I was about 6 weeks old. The doctors thought I had normal colic, however my mammy and daddy took me to the doctors when I was 11 weeks old and got a nasty shock when a consultant at the RVI in Newcastle told them I had developed a rare and aggressive form of cancer which had started in a gland just above my left kidney and spread through my liver, lymph glands and bone marrow. My tummy began to grow bigger by the day. My only hope for survival was to be given chemotherapy as soon as possible then to operate, mammy and daddy were told that the treatment would last for 12 months. I could sense everyone was worried, as I suppose you do not expect this in a new born baby.