A teenager who was told she had cancer just months after receiving a life-saving liver transplant says she’s just longing to live a normal life and sit her GCSEs.

Ruby Gray should be at college, studying to get qualifications for her future career and embarking on her first girls’ holiday.

Warning: Graphic image below

Instead, the 19-year-old, from Minster on Sheppey, has spent the last four years simply fighting for her life.

The Fulston Manor pupil’s first hospital trip came in August 2020 after her mum Hayley Edgly noticed she was becoming tired and had yellowing of the skin and the whites of her eyes.

Doctors at Medway’s A&E at first thought it could be a gall bladder problem and offered her scans.

The 44-year-old took her daughter home but they returned the next day and were blue-lighted to King’s College Hospital in London.

After a couple of days, Ruby was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis – a rare disease which attacks liver cells, the cause of which is unknown.

The then 15-year-old was kept on a steroid drip during her month's stay at the hospital.

Hayley stayed by her daughter's side for most of the time while her eldest son, Jack, who was 20 at the time, looked after her two-year-old, Harry.

The mum, who owns Perfection salon in Halfway, says this period was “incredibly hard” on the whole family.

She said: “I am a single parent so I was taking time off work and asking my son to look after my youngest boy so I could be with Ruby.

“As a parent, all you want to do is to protect your children but there was nothing I could do to stop what she was going through.

“It was shocking because you wouldn’t think a kid would have liver disease, you associate it with older people.”

After being able to leave, albeit on a strict course of a dozen different daily pills, Ruby was put on a waiting list for a liver transplant which she received in January this year.

Without it, Hayley says, Ruby “would not have survived” as her liver was decomposing inside her.

Ruby said: “I remember being called at 2am and being told there was a liver for me and then they sent an ambulance to pick me up.

“It was a massive relief as I was starting to feel worse although I was used to having belly aches.”

The surgery went as planned but Ruby’s ordeal was not over as she then began to suffer stomach cramps in March.

It turned out to be non-Hodgkin lymphoma - a type of cancer which affects one in 71 women in the UK and has caused more than 4,900 deaths between 2017 and 2019.

It is thought that as one of Ruby’s post-surgery medications, prednisolone, helped to suppress her immune system, it may have made her more susceptible to the usually innocuous Epstein–Barr (EVB) virus which has been linked to the development of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Ruby underwent a soft version of chemotherapy which was once a week for four weeks but, after having PET scans in May, doctors found remaining cancer in her bowels.

She is now set to undergo full chemotherapy treatment which she starts this week.

Due to her illness, Ruby has missed out on a lot from her teenage years.

Mum Hayley said: “She has been through fight after fight and she’s fed up fighting for her life and just wants to start living it.

“She has missed being a teenager. She should have been going to college and getting her qualifications for her first job.

“She should have also just been spending time with her girlfriends and having her first girls' holiday.”

During her time being unwell, Ruby’s education has the back seat and she has been unable to study for her GCSEs at her secondary school, Fulston Manor in Sittingbourne.

“She has been through fight after fight and she’s fed up fighting for her life and just wants to start living it”

Once she is better she plans to take her exams and get her qualifications to become a make-up artist, first gaining some experience at her mum’s salon.

Ruby will lose her hair during her upcoming treatment and is raising money to help pay for a wig.

The fundraiser had hit £4,400 at the time of writing - far exceeding her £1,500 target.

To view the fundraising page click here

Ruby said: “It is going to be really hard losing my hair as I am always changing my style and dying it.

“To be honest the whole situation has been overwhelming as so much has happened and I don’t know what to think about any of it.

“Over the last four years, I have been constantly unwell and I can’t wait to be feeling better and for it all to be over so that I can go back and get my GCSEs.

“My mum and my friends have been really supportive of me but I can tell when it is all taking a toll on them too.

“I can't believe the amount of donations I have received. I set the target but did not think it would come close to it. Now I don’t know what to do with the extra money.

“I think I might use it to go on holiday.”