Teen told ‘nothing doctors can do’ after tonsillitis led to cancer diagnosis

A Staffordshire mother is hoping to raise £150,000 for an alternative treatment for her daughter after doctors informed the family there was “nothing more they could do” following her acute myeloid leukaemia diagnosis at 16.

Kaitlyn Hurlstone, now 18, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, initially contracted tonsillitis in April 2024 which developed into “very strange” overgrown gums that “detached” themselves.

Her mother, Angharad Hurlstone, 38, took her to the dentist in late May, but she said they were not “sure what it was” so she was sent home with no answers.

The situation escalated when Kaitlyn started experiencing persistent vomiting, leg pain and fatigue, leading to a GP visit where doctors ordered a blood test on June 21.

Within hours, Kaitlyn was told to go for an emergency assessment in hospital, confirming the acute myeloid leukaemia diagnosis just four hours after the test.

Since then, Kaitlyn has undergone four rounds of chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant and brain surgery to reduce sudden swelling.

In June 2026, Kaitlyn’s cancer spread to her spinal fluid and caused further severe damage and swelling, leaving her blind and unresponsive in a life-threatening condition for a week.

After suddenly “turning a corner”, Angharad said her daughter is now in “uncharted waters”, so the family is raising money to try to get Kaitlyn on either a £9,000-a-month “breakthrough drug” or a £150,000 stem cell transplant because she claimed the “NHS won’t fund another one”.

On what it was like to be warned to say goodbye to her daughter in June 2026, Angharad said: “It was probably the worst day of my entire life.

“(Kaitlyn) was unresponsive… and then it was like she just completely turned a corner.

“And then she was laughing and joking with her friends.

“It was truly like a miracle had happened.”

Kaitlyn said: “I didn’t know people said their goodbyes.

“Hearing that now, it just hits you.”

Angharad said it all started when her daughter got tonsillitis in April 2024 and she “never really came back from it”.

Within a month, Kaitlyn said her symptoms progressed to overgrown gums, where both her top and bottom sets of gums grew over her teeth and then it “detached” so it was “flapping down” inside her mouth.

After a dentist could not work out why it was happening, Kaitlyn said she started experiencing other symptoms including fatigue, pale lips, vomiting, and leg pain when she was trying to play volleyball and “run on sand” at school.

Kaitlyn said: “The whole month of May, I was doing my GCSEs, but I was throwing up in the mornings.

“So we went to the doctors and they recommended I get a blood test.

“Exactly a week after my last exam on June 14, I got a blood test and a few hours later they called us straight into the hospital.”

At this point, the mother and daughter still thought Kaitlyn’s symptoms could just be anaemia, but when they walked through the hospital and realised the referral was in the cancer centre, Angharad said it immediately became “quite daunting”.

Kaitlyn added: “I tried to blank it out because we thought it was just an out-of-hours thing.”

By the time the two arrived at hospital at 8pm on June 21 2024, about four hours after having the urgent blood test, Kaitlyn was told she had acute myeloid leukaemia.

It is a cancer of the white blood cells that progresses quickly and aggressively, and is characterised by symptoms such as paleness, tiredness, breathlessness, frequent infections, and bone and joint pain, according to the NHS.

Overgrown gums – also known as gingival enlargement – can also be an early warning sign.

While Kaitlyn was lying in a hospital bed, Angharad spoke to a doctor who explained the diagnosis and treatment plan.

“We’ve got to think that Kaitlyn is a lawn of grass and it’s covered in weeds,” Angharad remembered the doctor said.

“What we need to do is kill the weeds, but when we do that, we will kill some of the lawn.”

Due to the aggressiveness of Kaitlyn’s cancer, she started chemotherapy the next day.

As a result, Kaitlyn said she felt well enough to attend only an hour of her school prom on July 11, before she returned to hospital for months more treatment, including regular platelet and blood transfusions.

A week later, Kaitlyn said it was “a bit devastating” to realise she had started losing her hair, but she “waited as long as (she) could” to shave it off in August because hair was her “thing” before her diagnosis.

Kaitlyn also experienced hot flushes, tiredness, nausea and sores in her mouth.

Since the beginning of her treatment in June 2024, Angharad said her daughter has had four rounds of chemotherapy, including one round of “the most intensive chemo that a human body can have” in December that same year.

Angharad said her daughter also had a “gruelling” round of treatment before a stem cell transplant in February 2025.

She then needed brain surgery four months later because of her brain swelling that caused her to “blow a pupil and (have a) seizure”, before she slipped into unconsciousness while in intensive care.

Kaitlyn then had burr hole surgery to relieve the swelling in her brain and Angharad said she made a “good recovery”.

Since then, doctors told them they are in “uncharted waters”, including when Kaitlyn was admitted to hospital in June 2026 after frequent vomiting and then she lost her vision completely.

Angharad said two MRI scans days apart showed Kaitlyn’s “leukaemia had infiltrated her brain”.

She added: “(Doctors) hadn’t seen an MRI look as bad as Kaitlyn’s did with leukaemia infiltration and so fast in comparison to the one four days prior.

“So that’s when they called it and said to get everyone in who needs to see her … to essentially say goodbyes.”

She added that Kaitlyn was “unresponsive” during a “whole week of torment”, before she “deteriorated rapidly” and had two rounds of full brain radiotherapy.

Angharad said Kaitlyn then “completely turned a corner” and it was like a “miracle had happened”.

Following Kaitlyn’s recovery, Angharad said doctors cannot put her on the clinical trial because of a “relapse in her central nervous system”, making her ineligible on the NHS, so the family are raising money to “get her in front of a private doctor”.

Angharad is “hopeful” the “breakthrough drug” treatment will cure one of her daughter’s specific gene mutations – NPM1 – so that Kaitlyn’s leukaemia cells do not simply return after chemotherapy.

Kaitlyn said: “I just want to be better and for all of it to go away.”

Angharad added: “We’re sharing our story to raise awareness for things to look out for because we would have never in a million years thought that it was leukaemia.”