IMAGINE making the gruelling trips for radiotherapy treatment in Oxford - all the time worrying about getting your three sons to school and back.

Cancer sufferer Angie Hawes doesn’t need to imagine. It’s been her life for the last year.

Grange Park mum Angie, 47, was diagnosed with breast cancer in August last year. She found a lump and fretted about it for a week before going to see her GP.

The pre-school assistant went through surgery and feared that she would have to have a course of chemotherapy. Her strain of cancer was so unusual that a biopsy had to be analysed by a lab in the United States.

“It wasn’t a straightforward type of cancer,” the mum-of-three said. “The doctor sat us down and said I might need chemo.”

But the doctor was wrong – with Angie facing radiotherapy instead.

While radiotherapy was Angie’s preferred option, the 20 treatment sessions were tough – and left Angie with radiation problems.

“They were quite dark days in December. I just felt so lonely and the car journey to Oxford was just so hard,” she said.

Facing the long 70-mile round trip to Oxford’s Churchill Hospital, her first thought was for her kids – especially her youngest, 11-year-old Sam, who was then in Year 6 at Shaw Ridge Primary School.

“This is where Shaw Ridge was so supportive. Some of my appointments were at eight o’clock in the morning. Sam was able to go in early and I was able to get him dropped off every day," she said.

“It was just such a massive help. The teachers at Shaw Ridge were brilliant.”

His mum’s torment had an effect on Sam. The youngster said: “Most of the year I was outside the classroom with a book to read. I just kept worrying about my mum.”

Brave Sam helped convince his teachers to raise funds for the Brighter Futures appeal. Sam’s 53 classmates were split into groups, with each tasked with raising as much as they could after being given just one £5 note between them.

Their teachers were delighted when Sam’s group allowed passers-by at the school’s fair to soak them with buckets of water – raising £41 for Brighter Futures. In total, the school raised £244 for the radiotherapy appeal.

Inspired by Martin Luther King, Sam also wrote a speech about cancer – read out in front of the school assembly by teacher Linda Tindall.

In his speech, Sam’s message to classmates and cancer-sufferers was powerful: “You guys sitting on the sofa feeling sorry for yourself, get up and let’s beat cancer. Go on, we will beat it – together.”

Teacher Linda Tindall said: “You could hear a pin drop in the school hall.”

Mum Angie missed the assembly as she gets quite emotional but emphasised she is proud of her son for raising the money towards Brighter Futures.

“I never thought that cancer would ever come to me,” said Angie, who lost her grandmother and cousin to the disease.

“Travelling to Oxford was just really hard. If I’d have gone to the Great Western Hospital I think it would have been so much easier.”