Cory's battle with cancer has brought family even closer

In October last year Cory McCarthy was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He and his mum Victoria spoke to Clare Hutchinson of the South Wales Echo about how they have battled through

BEING 16, Cory McCarthy is like any other teenage boy – he plays computer games, chats to school friends on the internet and harbours ambitions to one day be a professional rugby player.

But in one aspect Cory’s life is very different because, for almost a year, he has lived under the shadow of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

Nearly 1,500 people in the UK are diagnosed with the relatively aggressive form of cancer every year.

The disease is most common among 15 to 35-year-olds and in people over 50 and happens when cells in the lymph nodes – a type of bean-shaped gland found all over the body – become cancerous.

Despite it often spreading around the body quickly it is also one of the most treatable cancers and, according to the NHS, almost all young people with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma will be fully cured.

Cory’s own experience with the disease began when glands in his neck swelled up in 2008 and he was diagnosed with glandular fever.

“I was feeling really tired all the time and I was in bed constantly,” said Cory, as he sat next to his mum on a leather sofa in his terrace family home in Trealaw, near Tonypandy.

“It was really affecting me at school and I was losing a lot of weight because I was never hungry.

“We went to the doctor and they took a blood test which showed up positive for glandular fever.

“They said I would probably be affected for around a year, so I went home and got on with it.”

As a year passed and Cory’s energy levels and appetite didn’t improve, his mum Victoria Harris, 33, took him back to the doctor.

“In the back of my mind, I was wondering if it could be more serious,” said single mum Victoria.

“I remember I had been watching This Morning and there was a girl who had this lymphoma and all her symptoms sounded just like Cory’s. Just like her he was tired all the time, had lost a lot of weight and he had this terrible swelling on his neck.

“I’m not one of those paranoid mums who immediately panics at everything but when I went to the doctor I asked whether it could be this.”

At her insistence, Cory’s GP sent the pair to see a “friend” at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Llantrisant.

When they arrived, they realised they had been sent to see a cancer specialist.

After taking a look at Cory’s neck, the doctor rushed him straight into surgery, where he had a biopsy.

“It was horrific,” said Victoria. “You’ve never seen anything like it.

“They gave him a local anaesthetic and began to cut into the skin on his neck.

“He was awake, so he could feel what they were doing and he was screaming.

“Afterwards they took a scan. On the right side of his neck it was just dark but on the other side, you could see all these light-coloured circles. That’s when I knew there was something there. But cancer was never mentioned, by anyone.”

A week later Cory and his mum were called back into the hospital, where they were told the teenager had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

“I forgot about myself entirely for a minute and just looked at Cory,” said Victoria, who was holding back her own tears as she remembered.

“He was shaking and crying. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing and we never ever thought something like that could happen to us.

“I didn’t know anything about Hodgkin’s and both of us were so upset we couldn’t take in what the doctor was saying about it.

“We both just wanted to get out of that room and when we did we just stood at the end of the corridor and broke down.

“When we got back to the car we both wanted to escape from it and I said, ‘If you want to go anywhere Cory just say, we can go anywhere’, but in the end we both came home.

“There was so much to do and so many people enquiring after him we realised we couldn’t just run away from it.”

As soon as Cory was diagnosed his care was taken over by the Teenage Cancer Trust at the University Hospital of Wales.

“The staff there were fantastic,” said Victoria.

“It really was such a wonderful place for Cory to be and he had so much support. Their attitude was that you just get on with it.”

Cory was started on a course of chemotherapy and steroids, which – as well as making him exhausted – affected his emotions, making him angry, and he started to put on weight.

“It wasn’t nice to see him being pumped with all these drugs, feeling tired and sick and not being able to help him,” said Victoria.

“I had to be his best friend as well as his mum. How can you be a parent and say ‘I know best’ when you have no idea what he is going through?

“At that point all I could do was listen, understand and be there for him.”

The reality hit when Cory spent his first night at the hospital and called his mum in flood of tears.

“He had gone for a bath when I left and just as I got out to the car he called me crying and screaming saying ‘Mum, come back, come back.’

“When I got there I saw why he was upset – he had taken his T-shirt off to have a bath and clumps of his hair had come off with it.”

The next day Victoria and her close friend Claire Jones, 35, who has been “like a second mum” to Cory, came back to the hospital to help him shave his head.

Back at home, Claire and her mum Dawn helped care for Victoria’s other two children Chloe, 11, and three-year-old Madison.

As the family struggled to cope with the day-to-day reality of Cory’s illness they received a second blow: the teenager’s cancer had spread from his neck to his heart and stomach.

Cory said: “They had to increase the intensity of the chemo and I was having it every single day for a week, then three days the second week, and two weeks off then back to every day.

“I honestly can’t remember how it felt because I’ve blocked it from my mind.”

Victoria added: “When Cory had first been diagnosed we made three agreements.

“First was that I would never leave his side; second that I wouldn’t keep anything from him or he from me; and third was that we would take it week by week, month by month.

“When the news came back that it had spread we realised that cancer is one of those thing you can’t control so we decided to take it each day as it came. It couldn’t be weeks or months any more.”

As well as receiving constant support from friends and family, Cory was also helped by his favourite rugby team, Pontypridd RFC, who raised £1,700 for cancer charity Latch.

He also got the chance to meet the Welsh rugby team and the Ospreys, as well as his Pontypridd RFC hero Nathan Strong, and even went on a Latch trip to Downing Street with his uncle Patrick Harris, 31, to meet Gordon Brown.

He said: “It was almost a shame because I was so ill I couldn’t really appreciate it, but it was great to be able to hang around with the Welsh team.

“It has been the thought of playing for Pontypridd Youth that has kept me going.”

Finally, in February this year, doctors told Cory he had fought the cancer off.

The teenager will need to be in remission for five years before he gets the all-clear.

He added: “There’s still a long way to go. You think when you go into remission it is all over but it’s not – now I have to get back into my old routines and it is so difficult.”

Despite his hardships, Cory hopes to return to school in September to get his GCSEs and go to sixth form.

His mum added: “It has completely changed our outlook on life as a family.

“I still have nightmares and of course it has taken a toll on the girls.

“But I am so proud of Cory. If he can fight cancer, he can achieve anything in life.”