Teen 'detached from reality' to cope with return of aggressive cancer

A teenage boy with lymphoma says he coped with the return of his cancer by detaching himself from his illness, following advice from father who also faced the disease.

Ethan Griffiths, 14, was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma - a type of fast-growing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (nHL) - in January, undergoing chemotherapy and being declared cancer-free in May, before having an "aggressive" relapse.

The sport and gaming-mad teen, who underwent a new treatment being trialled in Bristol, came home to Maesteg cancer-free again in September.

"Through it all I tried to stay as positive as I could," said Ethan, adding it was his dad Lloyd, also a cancer survivor, who was often "losing his head".

News of the young rugby player's relapse came just two weeks after getting home from the hospital.

"It was much more heartbreaking because I was getting back into everything," he said.

"I went to school for half a day, and I was going to the gym quite regularly and getting back into fitness.

"Then obviously to hear that news was really horrendous."

His family faced "immeasurable stress" as Ethan joined a clinical trial at Bristol Royal Hospital Children for patients with B-cell nHL who had not responded to treatment or had relapsed.

The UK-wide trial involving two new drugs offered just a 50% chance of success.

"I would just switch off and he'd be losing his head next to me," Ethan said, nodding to his dad.

His strategy for staying calm was simple: "Stick my earphones in, listen to music and try to fall asleep."

Lloyd admitted his son probably gets his "stoic side" from mum Rusanne.

But the 56-year-old project manager said his own experience with a different type of lymphoma may have also helped.

He said: "One thing I said to Ethan from the start, probably when we first found out he'd relapsed, was: 'You're a passenger on this journey. You're not in control, you can't affect the outcome. So you have to kind of keep trying to detach yourself'."

Lloyd said Ethan "seemed to detach himself entirely from this whole nine months in a way".

"It's been quite inspiring really, how well he's managed to do that."

Ethan said in some ways undergoing treatment a second time was easier because he knew what to expect.

But mentally he said it was harder.

"Obviously you are thinking to yourself 'When is this all going to end?'"

His latest treatment involved intensive chemotherapy followed by a transplant using stem cells collected earlier in the process.

It meant spending several weeks in hospital in protective isolation.

"I found it alright to be honest," Ethan said.

"It was just very boring because we were in isolation."

Now home, Ethan is trying to get back to normal life.

He said he still becomes "really tired just walking" and knows it will take time to get back to rugby.

His immediate priority is to "build things up slowly with fitness" and catch up on schoolwork, initially through online lessons before gradually returning to the classroom.

"When my health is back up, start going in for half days maybe and slowly build everything back up," Ethan said.