Zane’s story: “No-one thinks their 15 year old is going to get a type of cancer.”

In January 2022, at just 15 years old, Zane was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma after collapsing at school. He went on to have different types of treatment throughout 2022 and started college in 2023 but sadly, in May 2024, he and his family were told his cancer had returned.

Zane was told his diagnosis was terminal in summer of 2024 and has since been receiving palliative care. He is continuing to go to college and learnt to drive so he can see his friends and make memories with his family.

Zane’s specialist social worker, Alex, has been a continued support to Zane and his family, helping to organise days out and special events so they can continue to make memories together as a family.

Dad, Martin, says: “He collapsed at school and we ended up going to A&E – he had said to me previously he had some pains in his pelvis area and I thought it was growing pains, we ended up going to A&E in Eastbourne and they transferred us to Hastings where they did an MRI scan on him and they found a large tumour in the left side of his pelvis, that was the end of January 2022.

“Everyone wishes they don’t hear those sort of things. No-one thinks their 15 year old is going to get a type of cancer. He was extremely upset and he said ‘I won’t be able to cope with this, I won’t be able to deal with this’ and Mia, my wife, she was fantastic, she said ‘you will get through this, we will get you through this, you’ve got a loving family and we will get you through it’.”

Zane was transferred to the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton where he started chemotherapy treatment. It wasn’t until later into his treatment plan that they got the official diagnosis of Ewing’s Sarcoma.

After his chemotherapy treatment finished, Zane had to go to UCLH in Central London for proton beam therapy. He went in every day for 28 days.

“We’d travel up, he’d have his treatment and we’d go home. But for that 30/40 minutes it could take 5 or 6 hours to get up there, get to the hospital and get back again so it had quite an impact on our lives because that was everyday for 28 days.”

Zane wasn’t able to go to school while he was on treatment and spent a lot of time away from his friends.

Once treatment finished in August 2022, Zane went on to have surgery, which was over 11 hours long, to remove part of his pelvic bone. The surgery left him unable to weight bear for three months afterwards, which meant he spent a lot of time in a wheelchair and then on crutches.

Once he had recovered from the surgery, Zane went back to school in September 2023. In May 2024, however, he started to feel some pains. They went to the GP and they suggested having a scan.

“The local hospital said they were concerned about a lump in his right clavicle and his T3 vertebrae, which is the third or fourth vertebrae from the top of the neck going down – so that scan was sent off to the Royal Marsden to look at it and they did a PET scan where they inject a dye and that connects itself to the cancer cells and they do a scan afterwards and it picks up where the cancer is in the body and they said there was one on his collarbone and one on his spine.

“They said there’s all sorts of treatments they could look at but because it had come back so quickly – if it comes back within two years its come back quite aggressively, they decided its going to be a terminal diagnosis. They said to him if he had treatment he could last 2 to 3 years, if he didn’t have treatment it would be about 12 months.

“He turned round and said ‘I don’t see the point for the sake of an extra year, I don’t see the point of me lying in bed and being ill’ he turned down the treatment and said ‘I don’t want anything’”

Zane decided he wanted to instead focus on spending time with his family and friends, to make memories together.

Zane continues to go to college, hang out with his friends and is learning to drive. He wants to continue to keep his independence as much as possible.

With help of his Young Lives vs Cancer Social Worker and with fundraising from his friends and family, Zane has also managed to do lots of exciting things with friends and family to create memories too.

“Alex said is there anything Zane would like to do and my cousin suggested him doing a supercar day because Zane’s into his cars and I thought he wouldn’t be able to do it because he was only 17 at the time and he could only drive automatic cars and I mentioned it to Alex and he said ‘leave it with me, I’ll have a look around’ and he came back and put us in contact

“My sister in law set up a gofundme page – we’ve had help to do loads of amazing things through friends and family, we’ve been to Chelsea to meet the players and Spain to meet the real Madrid team and see them play, we went to Brands Hatch, we went to golf at Wentworth, we went to see Anthony Joshua at boxing. This gofundme page has helped us to pay for all of that – it gives him some good experiences and us nice memories to have with him because different people went with him to different things.”