ON Saturday night Maguiresbridge teen, Dylan Smith will proudly walk out onto Windsor Park ahead of the Northern Ireland match in a declaration that he has taken on cancer, and won.

But the reality of living with cancer has only been a brief experience for the 14-year-old Fivemiletown College student.

For over six months doctors had been treating him with medication for Tuberculosis, unaware that the swollen glands in his neck and under his armpits were actually as a result of Hodgkins Lymphoma.

In May this year a second biopsy delivered the worrying truth that the Smith family’s second son had a cancer which was attacking his lymphatic system.

But after commencing a robust course of chemotherapy, doctors were happy to deliver the good news last month that Dylan was in remission.

The chance to represent the Northern Ireland Cancer Fund For Children (NICFC) as a flag bearer for Saturday night’s match is the icing on the cake for Dylan after a long road to get to the bottom of his illness.

“Dylan’s immune system is improving all the time now,” says his mother, Sonya, “And he got his line out last week which was the final milestone really -- now he is free of it all.

“He can go to the cinema again now and mix in crowds. The idea of him going to a football match just a few months ago would have been a complete ‘no, no’, just because of how bad his immune system was.” Although Dylan’s chempotherapy treatment started in May this year, the teenager had been sick for a year beforehand.

Doctors had initially suggested he had Cat Scratch Disease, giving him antibiotics to treat the lumps on his neck.

“We were just pushed from pillar to post,” recalls Sonya.

“When Dylan first mentioned about the lumps, the first thing that came into my head was cancer. That was back in March 2013.

“We went to the GP and he was referred to get an ultrasound. We were told we had to wait for four to six weeks, which is a disgrace I think.” In the meantime though, Dylan’s health was deteriorating before his mother’s eyes.

“He kept falling asleep all the time, he just could not stay awake. And I knew the lump was getting bigger but I didn’t want to worry him. I thought: ‘There is something wrong with this child, but what is it?’ “And all the while he was going to school. God love him. He would come home and say: ‘I fell asleep in school today’. “I would tell him: ‘Well, you will just have to go to bed early tonight’.” In the end Sonya took her son to the Accident and Emergency department at South West Acute Hospital (SWAH).

“They admitted him that night to the Children’s Ward,” she explains.

Dylan’s lymph node glands had swollen, measuring 2cm by 2cm.

And within a month they were measuring 4cm by 4cm.

Doctors told Sonya that Dylan had Cat Scratch Disease.

“It’s a flea that a cat can carry which gets into your immune system,” she explains, “I had never heard of it before.

“He was on the antibiotic but he wasn’t getting any better.” And a biopsy at the time did not show any signs of cancer.

“His lymph node had swollen up that much that it had burst out through his skin on his neck,” adds Sonya, “At the end of last August, they burst out. And when the doctor in Altnagelvin saw it, they said it wasn’t Cat Scratch, it looked like TB.

“He was transferred to Belfast and the doctor there looked at him and said, ‘Yes, it’s TB’.

“I think when someone gets something on the tip of their tongue, there is just no going back -- they were sure it was TB.

“So he went on TB tablets -- 13 a day. From September last year until the end of April this year.” The medication had horrible side effects meaning Dylan struggled to keep any food down.

“He lost 10kg in one month but the lumps just kept on swelling and he got sicker and sicker,” says Sonya.

And around this time the lump protruding from Dylan’s neck began to look like it was infected.

“The doctors just said that was the infection draining out, and don’t worry about it.

“But it was like an open wound with green goo running out of it. They just handed me sticking plasters and told me ‘stick them on it’.” On one occasion Sonya asked for more appropriate plasters while a nurse was dressing Dylan’s neck.

“She said she would contact the District Nurse and get them for me.

“But when the District Nurse landed here she looked at the plasters I had been using and went balistic!

“She asked Dylan: ‘How long have you had this on your neck?’.

“I told her it had been open since August.

“What was I meant to do? There was nobody telling me I was supposed to be speaking to her.

“She said it was a disgrace that we hadn’t been told to use the right plasters. But that was the last I heard of her.” With the TB medication having no positive impact on Dylan’s condition, doctors decided to try another biopsy in May this year.

“The doctor walked in one day and said: ‘He is no better from when he started this medication. In fact, he is worse. Let’s stop all this and start again’.” And when an oncologist rang Sonya to ask her to attend an appointment to discuss the biopsy results, she knew what to expect.

“In a way it’s not the result you want to hear but we were just so fed up at that point that we were glad, finally, to get to the bottom of it all.

“When they started the chemo, within one week the lumps were practically gone.

“The doctor had said at the time: ‘It’s hard but it is the right medicine for the right job’.

“Hindsight is a great thing.

“But my husband says you can’t go backwards we have to look forwards because Dylan is getting better. And we have had so much support from, family friends and neighbours. We have been very lucky.

“Before, I was seeing him going down and down and and I was telling him, here, take these TB tablets, knowing deep down in my heart that they weren’t even doing anything.

“And when I found out it was cancer I went straight into the kitchen, took all the TB tablets, put them in a bag and marched straight down to the chemist I told them: ‘Burn them for all I care -- I don’t want to have to look at them again!’.

“I felt awful that for so long I had insisted that he take them.” It is unclear why the biopsy showed no signs of cancer, even though Dylan’s glands were already swollen.

“One of the doctors said the equipment isn’t as good in Derry as it is in Belfast,” says Sonya.

“Well if they don’t have good enough equipment then they shouldn’t be doing it. If you needed a biopsy you wouldn’t care how many miles you had to travel to get it if you knew you were going to get a true result at the end of it all.

“It may have been that there wasn’t enough of it there the first time round to show up on the biopsy. We will never know, but we just have to look forward now.

“Dylan had his last scan in September and the doctor told us his glands had gone down. A couple are still swollen but are only about half a cm and they will gradually go down. The doctor told us they only worry about something over 1cm. And to think that at one stage his were 2cm by 2cm and nobody was worried and Dylan was expect to just keep plodding on!”