If you’ve read the story so far you’ll know that I was treated in a children’s ward, alongside toddlers and babies. I never met anyone my own age and always felt like I was the only person of my age in the hospital.

The first time I met other cancer patients that were a similar age to me was when I was invited to an animation workshop, arranged by JTV cancer support. JTV Cancer Support is a project for teenagers and young adults who have been affected by cancer. Using all aspects of media it enables young people to explore and express their feelings, and make some sense of their very personal journeys from diagnosis onwards. (copied from their website)

I was invited to the workshop with not much treatment left to go in August 2009 and I was feeling a bit wary, but also it sounded like a cool thing to do. We all met at a place not too far from the Royal Marsden. There were other teenage patients there too and I was a bit amazed by that as I had always felt like I was the only one!

It was great to finally meet others my own age who had gone through something similar to myself, who fully understood the implications of cancer and who let me know their own stories of their own experiences.

Apart from that, we all had a good time making up silly animations and whilst everyone else used computer-generated animation, I decided to go down the route of stop-motion animation. If you think of how Wallace and Gromit are made then that’s what I mean! I found it a really interesting thing to do and if you want to see the results, it was all videoed, so click here and take a look!

This was the first of many projects that I got involved with that involved socialising with other teenagers and young people with cancer. It was a great way to make new friends and learn about others experiences. Some of which were similar to mine and others which were completely different.