Josh’s story

Josh was in his last year of secondary school when he was diagnosed with having a tumour in his chest. After visiting three hospitals in 48 hours he was referred for chemotherapy at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, nearly 80 miles away from his home in the Lake District.

His treatment meant that he had to travel to Manchester every three weeks for six days at a time, meaning a lot of time away from school. His GCSEs also fell in the middle of his treatment and so he wasn’t able to complete all his exam papers, meaning a lot of disruption to his final year at school.

It was Josh’s CLIC Sargent Social Worker, Freya, who told him about the Thrive Not Just Survive grant made possible by our partner Societe Generale, and so he applied to purchase a laptop that could handle his specialist engineering software to aid his schoolwork, as well as being a way for him to stay connected with friends while away in hospital.

Josh was looking forward to getting back on track after having an operation to remove the tumour in January and completing his treatment, but due to coronavirus this has been unable to happen.

Since then, Josh has been using the laptop to help him study for his A Levels at home, with hopes to study robotics or mechatronic engineering at Lancaster University this time next year.

In the meantime, he’s been making the most of living in the countryside and has been enjoying taking up paddle-boarding during the summer holidays!