HE has spent all his teenage years battling leukaemia.

But now Connor McDowall has the chance to live a life without constant medical treatment and interventions.

The 19-year-old has just undergone a stem cell transplant that could leave him free of the disease.

His decision to go ahead with the transplant, however, was not easy and is something he and mum Angela Quinn have agonised over.

Angela said: “When Connor was a teenager, I made all the decisions. Now he’s an adult I somehow have to find a way to step back and let him decide for himself.

“With the transplant, Connor said he did not want it and I was convinced he should have it.

“I’m so relieved he has said yes and we are grateful beyond words to his donor.”

Angela said her son had been a healthy, sporty boy until the age of 12 when he began to develop pains in his knees and then hip.

But, despite repeated tests at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, doctors struggled to find anything wrong with the first year pupil.

In October 2010 Connor was sent to the then-Yorkhill Hospital.

Angela said: “Doctors has reassured us it wasn’t cancer but an hour or two after they completed certain tests, the consultant and four nurses came in and said, ‘We are really, really sorry but Connor has leukaemia.’”

Connor said when medics gave him his diagnosis as he wasn’t sure what leukaemia was or how serious it could be.

Angela, though, burst into tears.

The 41-year-old said: “The only thing I remember, it was heartbreaking, Connor said, ‘Am I going to die?’ and the doctor said, ‘I don’t know but I hope not.’

“As a parent, it’s your responsibility to protect your child and pave their way through the world but how could I explain all of this to him when I didn’t understand it myself?”

She added: “We were moved to the Schiehallion ward very quickly and I had no time to process the fact I had gone from having an ill child to having a child with a life threatening illness.

“It was the most horrible moment in my life.

“We had never known anybody with leukaemia and my ignorance was perhaps best shown when I said to the doctor, ‘Can it spread?’

“He told me it was everywhere anyway.”

Connor had developed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and was started on chemotherapy immediately.

It would be the start of three-and-a-half years of chemotherapy, taken every day and sometimes even twice a day.

The treatment caused Acute Vascular Necrosis (AVN), where the bone dies due to lack of blood. It means Connor will need a hip replacement.

While Connor coped extremely well, there were times he struggled and tried to run away from the ward.

At one point, the family had to move house as they were living up three flights of stairs and Connor used a wheelchair.

His school, Trinity High School, was a great support and his friends rallied round him.

But it was impossible to be a normal teenager and Connor has missed out on certain milestones, such as learning to drive - even though he took a mechanics course at college.

Angela said: “We had to sink or swim. You are thrown in at the deep end.

“I personally don’t think it’s possible to have a normal childhood when you can’t go out and you can’t eat certain things and you’re constantly attending clinics.

“Your life is controlled and dictated by this appointment and that appointment.

“You can’t plan ahead. There is absolutely no way you can plan anything. You don’t know what his white cell counts are going to be. If he has a temperature you have to get him up to the hospital.

“Your whole life becomes hospital life and the more you try to fight it, the more you dig your heels in, the harder it gets. So you just have to go with it.”

Finally, at the age of 16, Connor was in remission and starting to plan for the future.

But, while on a dream trip to New York, it became clear that the teenager was unwell again. He was permanently exhausted.

Connor said: “I had about a year cancer-free. My chemo finished in February, which was my mum’s birthday present. Then it came back the following year and that was her birthday present too.”

Angela said: “I was devastated. Absolutely devastated. After three and a half years we had thought, ‘It’s done, that’s it’. You have a wee niggle in the back of your mind about the cancer coming back, you can’t help it.

“But it’s not healthy so you have to stop and put the cancer behind you.

“Then it came back and I thought, ‘There you go. We have to start all over again.’

“I wasn’t angry the first time. A lot of people say, ‘Why us?’ but why not us?

“The second time I was angry. He had had enough. Enough years had been taken and he had just started to do what a 17-year-old should be doing.”

But Connor, from Renfrew, said: “Better me than a little two year old who isn’t strong enough to fight it.”

For Angela, a former 999 operator, the second time round has been gruelling but made worse by the fact Connor is now in control of his own treatment.

He is also not as cautious as she would like him to be - a common feeling for any mum but made worse by the fact Connor can very easily fall gravely ill.

Just last year he contracted chicken pox that turned into encephalitis and left him on life support.

When things are tough the pair support one another. Angela said: “We have our moments. But I have my moments when I think I can’t possibly go on and he comes to give me a hug and says, ‘I love you’. We get through it together.”

Now Connor is telling the story of his decision to have a transplant in the second series of Scotland’s Superhospital, on BBC One Scotland on Monday April 24.

He underwent the procedure on Friday afternoon and will now have weeks in isolation.

Angela said: “We know it’s not a definitive cure. We know it doesn’t come without risks. But Connor deserves a normal life and the chance to get back some of what should have been his formative years.”