Beth’s a real lifesaver

GCSE 2008 V

A BRAVE Shaw girl has sailed right to the top of the class after passing 14 GCSEs just months after she donated her bone marrow to save her brother’s life.

While her friends spent their evenings studying, Royton and Crompton pupil Beth Blezard was keeping a vigil at the bedside of her brother Adam, who was diagnosed with leukaemia in June last year.

And although she spent gruelling hours wired up a to a specialist bone marrow extractor, it did not stop the clever youngster scooping two A*s, two As and 10Cs in her GCSE exams only months later.

“I was so nervous about what I’d get, I just held onto the envelope for ages refusing to open it.” she said.

“I really wasn’t expecting to do so well because I never did any work in the evenings. I would just come home from school, go and look after my horse and go straight up to see Adam at Christies.”

Adam (17) was in the middle of his GCSEs at Royton and Crompton last summer when he was diagnosed with leukaemia, leaving him unable to complete the exams.

“It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had when we found out Adam had leukaemia” said Beth, (16).

“When they told me I was a match for him, I was over the moon. I was quite nervous about the procedure, but I didn’t think twice about doing it.

“I probably would have done it if it had been someone else and there was certainly no way I would tell Adam I wasn’t going to do it.”

While teens across the borough were completing important coursework assignments, Beth was engaged in a round of meetings with consultants at Christies, who wanted to make sure she knew what she was undertaking.

Finally, in October last year, Beth spent four hours wired up to a machine which extracts bone marrow and Adam was successfully transplanted days later.

“I had to sit there with all these needles coming out of me and I felt quite achy and ill afterwards, but I went back to school the next day, because I wanted to catch up with my study” she said.

And thanks to Beth’s brave efforts, Adam, who is re-sitting his English and maths GCSEs and applying for part-time college courses, is now in remission.

“I missed a lot of study when Adam was ill, having to take days off for meetings with consultants and visiting him in the evening, and even after he came out in November it was really hard to concentrate. It’s always in the back of your mind that he might get ill again and it’s a horrible feeling.

“Adam has also lost a lot of his confidence, so after he came out I spent a lot of time with him in the evenings.”

Beth, of Luzley Brook Road, is now set to study an A level in health and social biology at Oldham Sixth Form College and has her heart set on becoming a nurse.

Royton and Crompton assistant headteacher Helen Higham said: “Beth has been through an awful lot, but has never used it as an excuse to cut back on the studying.

“She’s an unbelievably caring and compassionate young lady.”