Little Johnathan Fahrenholz has just been diagnosed with a rare form of the disease - and his parents Keith and Carole Leonard are now by his bedside at Alder Hey Children's Hospital, Liverpool.

The Tele-tubby mad youngster, who is a pupil at Victoria Road Primary School, faces two years of chemotherapy.

Carole said: "When he first went to hospital he was screaming in pain. It's so hard.

"He just wants to go home. He can't understand why he is here. He is so young, it's so difficult to explain."

Carole's colleagues at Bookers Cash and Carry in Northwich are organising a series of fund-raising events to help the family - starting with a 20 mile sponsored walk to Chester on Sunday.

They've also set up a special account at the Halifax Building Society to help Johnathan.

Carole said: "I think it's brilliant. The staff are wonderful. I've only been there three months but we all pull together."

The nightmare began for Keith and Carole Leonard when a doctor diagnosed Johnathan as having asthma last October.

But when he visited the surgery again on January 22 he was told by another doctor to go to Leighton Hospital immediately.

Just 24 hours later he was in Alder Hey diagnosed with leukaemia.

Doctors found the youngster was also suffering from a collapsed lung which meant delaying an operation for fear he might not come out of the anaesthetic.

The operation to go into the youngster's bone marrow to check how far the cancer had spread was successfully carried out on Monday.

Johnathan is suffering from acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia, which is cancer of the white blood cells.

Doctors hope that the intense chemotherapy will kill the white cells and allow new cancer-free cells to grow.

Carole said: "I want to cry all the time. It's every mother's worst nightmare. You think, someone else's child, not mine.

"You think why him, but then you walk into this ward and you realise that you are not alone. I thought how can there be a god if all these children are so sick."

Doctors have told the couple that Johnathan has a 75 per cent chance of success.

But Keith and Carole are taking nothing for granted.

Keith said: "You have to live each day as it comes because he could die.

"When I go home at night I get into bed but I can't sleep. It goes over and over in my mind."

In the meantime the couple, from Middlewich Road, are anxious that when they come home friends should feel comfortable with them.

Carole said: "People must not be frightened of coming and talking to us."

Ironically the couple are former landlords of The Old Salt Barge in Marston but gave it up a few months ago to spend more time with Johnathan and Carole's two other children Pamela, aged 10 and James, nine.

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