WAKING up in the morning, she would see the clumps of hair on her pillow and be instantly reminded of how sick she was.

But strangely there was something cathartic for Steph Hayter when she gathered up the strands of striking pink hair – having dyed it purposely so it didn’t look like her familiar blonde shade.

Psychologically it was helping the then 19-yearold deal with every girl’s worst nightmare as her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes began to fall out as a result of the intensive chemotherapy treatment she was receiving.

Now almost three years on since being diagnosed with leukaemia, having endured more than most people her age dare even contemplate, she has finished the gruelling treatment.

Despite missing a year of her studies, which she then had to catch up on in between visiting the hospital for blood transfusions, she has remarkably graduated from university with a 2:1 and now has a zest for life which includes wanting to travel the world and become a history teacher.

But sharing her brave and inspirational story with others is high on the 22-year-old’s agenda, especially if it means she can do her bit to help other cancer sufferers to benefit from the work of local charity CLIC Sargent whose vital services and support helped her in her fight against the disease. The charity has joined forces with the Daily Echo to raise £40,000 through our Every Step Appeal, to ensure other young people and their families can get the practical, clinical and emotional support from CLIC Sargent’s team based at Southampton General Hospital, throughout their journey.

Steph was in her first year at university in Birmingham, where she was studying history and anthropology, when she became ill.

It began with pains in her hip late at night – just like growing pains – which gradually got worse and by the time she came home to Chandler’s Ford for the summer holidays it was becoming increasingly severe. Initially doctors thought it might be arthritis and also referred Steph, a keen runner, to a physio.

Secretly however, Steph was researching her symptoms on the Internet – and had found herself reading about leukaemia, but the prospect seemed so unlikely and so frightening that she didn’t raise it with her parents and put it to the back of her mind.

When the pain failed to subside she was eventually referred for a blood test and bone biopsy at Winchester ’s Royal Hampshire County Hospital – and the very next day she took the phone call asking her to come in for her results.

“The nurse told me I should bring my parents, but I was saying ‘oh no, I’ll just come on my own’ but she told me again that it would be a good thing to do.

“We turned up at the ward not sure what to expect until we saw the sign that clearly said ‘Chemotherapy Ward’ staring back at us.

“We were taken into a room with sofas and the rest is just a blur to me, I think I have just blocked it out.”

Steph, who has just moved to London with boyfriend Ciaran, where she has got a summer job working with a charity supporting teenagers, added: “Looking back now, I think cancer might have been something that was in the back of all our minds, but at the time you never let yourself even think it could happen to you.

“I remember my first thought being, oh no, now I’ve got to move back in with my parents! I didn’t mean that in a horrible way – but I had only just got my independence, I was at university and enjoying life, living with my friends and having met my boyfriend.”

As she came to terms with the news that she had leukaemia, Steph was told her chances of survival would be between 70 and 75 per cent.

“That was weird for me, because although that is quite high, 25-30 per cent of not surviving is also a big statistic,” she said.

“The doctors told me that day that they wanted me to go straight into Southampton General Hospital, but I didn’t want to go immediately. I had arranged to see my old friends that night at the pub and I didn’t want to miss out on that – I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I would be able to do that again.”

Steph announced the news of her diagnosis to her friends via a message on Facebook so they were all aware.

“I wanted them to know but I didn’t want it to be strange that night. We didn’t talk about it much, I think people tried to avoid it.”

The following day Steph was admitted to hospital, which was to become a home from home for her throughout the next 12 months.

“I didn’t know what was ahead of me in those early days. Most people on the ward around me were over 70. There were some really ill people and I just kept wondering why I was there among them when I felt well.

“One of the weirdest moments was being taken for an X-ray and being made to sit in a wheelchair to be taken there, but I could walk and I was fine – I’d been for a run the previous day.”

But as chemo kicked in it began to take its toll on Steph.

“I had not felt ill before, but then suddenly I was. I think I blocked a lot out, I don’t really remember it. People think chemo is this terrible thing that’s really going to hurt, a terrible experience which you have never felt anything like before. To me it was like having the worst hangover, it left me so tired, sick and gagging.

“You feel like you are suddenly not you, you’re just this thing in a bed.”

But despite how bad she was feeling, losing her freedom and watching the pain her family – mum Janice, dad George and brother Benjamin – were enduring because of her illness was worse for Steph, a former student at Thornden School and Peter Symonds College.

Having dyed her hair shades of pink, purple and blue and cut it short, it wasn’t long before it began to fall out. Eventually her mum agreed to shave most of it off, leaving a quirky Mohican cut until it all disappeared.

Her face and stomach puffed and swollen from the steroids, Steph was sometimes bedridden with exhaustion and confined to a strict diet of fully cooked food and purified water. Her fluctuating blood count determined whether she could recover at home or if she would have to remain in hospital.

She said: “I suppose you don’t know what you will be like until it happens. It doesn’t seem real – I don’t think it’s really hit me even now.”

But looking back, Steph says it was the support she received from CLIC that made a harrowing time of her life that little easier.

In hospital, she would be visited almost daily by a CLIC nurse, she was assisted with financial issues surrounding her student loan by their workers and they could even help with accommodation for Ciaran when he visited Steph each weekend from Birmingham, giving him keys to CLIC Haven – a property near to the hospital for relatives of young people with cancer to stay close by.

Steph said: “What CLIC did for me and for other young people was, and is, so important. Your only relief as a young person in a big ward, with lots of old and sick people around you, is them.”

Steph was determined to return to university following completion of her first full year of intense chemotherapy – and with the help of CLIC – arrangements were made to enable her to do so while receiving further less invasive treatment at the hospital there.

It allowed her to complete her degree, attending lectures in between receiving blood transfusions.

And now her treatment has ended their support remains – with Steph enjoying meals out with fellow cancer sufferers as she continues to recover.

Steph said: “I don’t think I can stress enough how important what CLIC does is. They are definitely friends and what they do for young people like me is vital.

“They continue to support me at what is a weird time. It’s not completely positive when you come to the end of treatment.

People said to me I should have a party but I would never want to celebrate or tempt fate by doing that.”

Now keen to raise awareness amongst other young people, Steph spends time with teenagers talking to them about her experience, under the Anthony Nolan Register and Be a Lifesaver scheme.

“Educating other people is really important to me. People don’t like to say the word ‘cancer’. But they shouldn’t be scared, it doesn’t need to be like that.”

ALREADY more than £32,000 has poured in thanks to generous donations from people across Hampshire.


But a further £8,000 is still needed to raise enough to ensure ten more young people and their families get the essential lifeline offered by CLIC Sargent following diagnosis.