A YOUNG submariner from the region who is battling with a rare form of cancer is to cycle from Coast to Coast in aid of a children’s cancer charity.

JJ Nicholson, a tactical submariner with the Royal Navy who is from Redcar, East Cleveland, said training for the challenge was keeping his mind off his treatment and keeping his fitness levels up.

The 22-year-old was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone and soft tissue cancer, after feeling an agonising pain in his left shoulder.

“It turned my world upside down. It was the worst news ever,” he said.

“I knew there was something seriously wrong.”

He was put straight on to the most intensive form of chemotherapy and has also had to watch his mother, Debra Ford, 47, battling breast cancer for the last three years.

“I cannot imagine what she is feeling but she just keeps going on normally,” said JJ, who is based at HMS Neptune, near Glasgow with the Royal Navy.

JJ,formerly of Rye Hills School in Redcar, has been engaged to finacee Samantha for four years. He has undergone four sessions of chemotherapy and will have six in total before having an operation to remove bone from his upper arm in October. It will be replaced with an implant.

To find out more about the Toma Fund visit www.toma-fund.org.