I thought I had glandular fever on my gap year, but it turned out to be leukaemia

It was meant to be the start of Tom Hunt’s gap year – a fortnight in eastern Europe with five school friends. He had achieved an A* and two As in his A-levels and had an offer to study medicine at the University of Manchester. Before then, he wanted to do a ski season and travel around south-east Asia. But a week into his holiday, at the beginning of September last year, Tom was so ill he couldn’t eat, drink or get out of bed. He booked a flight home from Prague.

“When I picked him up from the airport, he looked dead,” says Andrea, 51, his mother. “He was really grey – and smelt of bacteria.”

Tom’s symptoms – loss of appetite, fatigue, dizzy spells – had all the hallmarks of glandular fever. But he also had a large, swollen haematoma on his knee, which had appeared after hours spent with his legs crossed on a train.

“When I woke, it was killing me, just here,” says Tom, 19, pointing at his thigh above his left knee. “I thought it was a dead leg, but there was a massive lump and it was painful to walk.”

Andrea thought Tom would get better with rest – but within a week, having returned to the family home, he was hospitalised. The GP told Andrea: “This lad needs tests and monitoring, because he’s at risk of infection.”

The lump on his leg, it turned out, was a result of a dangerously low platelet count. Glandular fever can give patients a low white blood cell count, but Tom’s fell way below even that. 

“That’s when we knew we could be looking at leukemia,” says Andrea, her eyes welling up. “I never get upset until I talk about this.”

When we meet at the Hunt family home in Hale, Manchester, Tom’s short responses could be mistaken for indifference – but he says he can’t remember many details from the time. Andrea, who is affable and supportive, fills in the blanks: how Tom cried when he was first diagnosed, how terrifying it was when he was rehospitalised with a seizure shortly before his birthday, and his recent confession that he might be experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.

“You said the other day that you think you might have a little bit of PTSD, because you wake up in a panic about your blood cells,” says Andrea. Tom brushes it off, responding: “Not a panic, but… like when you wake up and think about your homework.”

Tom was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a rare form of the disease that affects fewer than 800 people in the UK each year, mostly children and young adults. It is caused by a genetic mutation in stem cells that prompts immature white blood cells to enter the bloodstream, weakening a patient’s immune system. It was this that made Tom susceptible to glandular fever.

“It was just unlucky – it could have been anyone,” says Tom. “If I hadn’t flown home when I did, they reckon I would have had a week or two to live. The glandular fever, chest infection and throat infection I had would have got worse and worse.”

Leukemia is the 13th most common cancer in the UK, with almost 10,000 people per year diagnosed, but GPs often miss it in the first couple of visits, because the telltale symptoms – fatigue, shortness of breath, fever and bruising – can be attributed to other problems, such as a common cold. Tom had been “feeling tired all summer”, but put it down to “going a bit hard after my A-levels”.

“I had a few swollen lymph nodes in my neck and groin, and my wisdom teeth kept getting infected, but it wasn’t anything I wouldn’t say was normal,” says Tom, who ran children’s parties at a local farm over the summer.

The moment doctors told Tom he had leukemia “is a bit of a blur”, but he says he thought: “Right, whatever, cool, let’s get on with it”. For her part, Andrea swore, then called her husband, Tom’s father, Ian, and told him to come to the hospital.

“Ian was a wreck,” says Andrea. “He was in floods of tears. I threatened to slap him at one point and said: ‘You’re not going in to Tom’s room until you pull yourself together.’” Tom was more stoic, reminding his mother: “What has he got to cry about? Tell him it’s not him, it’s me.”

Normal life for the Hunts was put on hold. The family cancelled a trip to Abu Dhabi for Andrea’s 50th birthday, and she spent the next five weeks at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust hospital with Tom, who began chemotherapy. Ian went back to work at the dentist practice he runs, and kept an eye on their younger children, Alex, 18, and Hattie, 12.

“It does affect them, but you don’t realise until afterwards,” says Andrea. Tom adds: “Hattie has a friend with a brain tumour. She had only seen him when he was well, which is not a bad perception.” But Alex “was devastated”: his peer mentor at school had died from cancer. Despite this, Tom says Alex “always treated me normally, like I’ve not had anything wrong with me”.

Friends and neighbours made sure the Hunt’s fridge was always full, and Andrea’s colleagues took care of her business. Jokes kept them going: it was “our health-freak friends who scored the lowest” in the lasagne competition. The family also threw themselves into fundraising for charities including Leukemia Care.

From September to April, Tom had four rounds of chemotherapy, as well as steroids. After the first round, bone marrow tests showed one per cent of his cells were cancerous, down from 99 per cent when he was diagnosed.

“I think I probably was scared, I just didn’t let it worry me,” says Tom. Meeting another teen who was six months ahead of him in treatment “definitely helped – to have someone who has been through it to ask questions”.

Not having the answers for Tom was something Andrea found difficult. “As a parent, you have always had the answers,” she says. “You put a plaster on it and it’s gone away. With leukaemia, there aren’t as many answers.”

Tom remembers spending days on the PlayStation – “I could sit there and talk to my mates, feel like I was a bit more normal” – and going for short walks with Andrea. His girlfriend, Roisin, who he started dating over the summer, would also visit him in hospital and at home. 

Now back in full-time education, studying medicine, Tom doesn’t like to dwell on everything he missed out on during his gap year (“It would just p--- me off”). Tiredness will still overwhelm him once or twice a week, but he copes by having an early night, even if his friends are going out.

The experience may even have helped Tom with his studies. “I’ve been there,” he says. “I try to empathise – I know what patients are going through.” He may now specialise in haematology.

It will be another two years until Tom gets the “all clear”, which is also when he will finish his course of chemotherapy tablets. There is a five per cent chance his leukemia will return. According to the NHS, almost 70 per cent of acute lymphoblastic leukemia sufferers aged between 15 and 24 will live for more than five years after diagnosis. “I’m just going to get on with life and hope for the best,” he says.

The week before we meet, Tom left the football pitch with a large bruise on his leg and panicked. But then he remembered his platelets are low because of the medication he is taking. “If everyone thought a bruise was leukemia then we’d all be gone, wouldn’t we?” he says. “You can’t think about it.”

Ian and Andrea are still coming to terms with the fear and strain of last year, and have become a “little bit overcautious”.

“It sounds silly, but you tend to be that little bit more protective,” says Andrea. “Ian is going on about tracking Alex on his phone… If Tom calls and says he’s got a funny tummy, Ian thinks: ‘Oh god, what is it?’ You always have it in your mind.” They have started seeing a counsellor to process their feelings after Tom’s recovery.

On November 19, Tom celebrates his 20th birthday. This year, he will be on placement in a GP practice; last year, he was allowed to go home from the hospital for the day, having been admitted following a seizure earlier that week.

“I threw up the whole time,” he says. Andrea adds. “As he sat on the toilet with a bucket on his knee, he said to me: ‘I’m not really going to have a 19th year, am I?’ And it’s true, he didn’t really. He’s fast-forwarded to his twenties.”

Leukaemia Care, which provides support to individuals and families affected by blood cancer, is one of three charities supported by this year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal.

Our two other charities are Wooden Spoon, which works with Britain’s rugby community to raise money for sick, disabled and disadvantaged children; and The Silver Line, a 24-hour helpline and support service for lonely elderly people.

To make a donation, visit telegraph.co.uk/charity or call 0151 284 1927