Filmed over nine months, this hour-long documentary takes us inside Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s Young Person’s Unit - a specialised cancer ward in Birmingham where the young patients undergo months of gruelling treatment in the hope of overcoming their illness.

Here we meet Rebecca, an eighteen-year-old student who’s just been diagnosed; Adam, 24 whose cancer has returned three times in the past nine years; and 16-year-old Alex, who’s facing an operation which may drastically alter his life forever.

All of them are under the care of ward sister Nicky Pettitt, who’s looked after hundreds of teenage patients as they go through some of the best and worst experiences of their lives - from being told they’re going to get better to facing the uncertainty of survival and even death. How do the teenagers and their friends and families cope with life-threatening conditions?

18-year-old Rebecca was planning to go on to university until the lump in her leg was diagnosed as bone cancer and she was admitted to Queen Elizabeth’s to start a course of chemotherapy. We follow Rebecca as she receives her diagnosis, organises a sponsored head shave, undergoes an operation to remove her tumour and begins rehabilitation to learn to walk again. The film charts the impact of Rebecca’s rapidly deteriorating health on her, her mother Ellen, and boyfriend Guy.

Also on the ward is 16-year-old Alex: an aspiring break dancer until he too was diagnosed with bone cancer. We meet him as he is about to undergo an operation to remove the tumour from his leg. His doctor advises an amputation in a bid to minimise the chance of the cancer returning, but Alex is adamant that he doesn’t want this to happen. As he is wheeled into the operating theatre, Alex knows he may wake up with his leg having been amputated.

At just 24, Adam is the old man of the Young Person’s Unit. He was first diagnosed at the age of 15, and the cancer has returned three times since then, most recently in his lungs. The numerous courses of chemotherapy he has already undergone have damaged his internal organs, most notably his kidneys. Unable to have yet more chemotherapy, Adam struggles to continue with his normal life for as long as possible before his illness progresses and he is called back into hospital.

With intimate access to the patients and medical staff, Teenage Cancer Ward (W/T) tells the poignant stories of three young people thrust together at random by their life-threatening conditions.

Through their stories, the film becomes a portrait of a teenage mindset often ignored or misrepresented by the media. It’s a mindset where their youthful fighting spirit is the one thing that keeps Adam, Rebecca and Alex going. Through these teenagers’ heart-wrenching stories we can glimpse an extraordinarily hopeful approach to life, love, sickness and health.

Director: James House
Series Producer: Monica Garnsey
Exec Producers: Nick Hornby, Simon Ford
Production Co: North One Television
Commissioning Ed: Mark Raphael
Press contact: Sophie Toumazis, tpr media consultants, 020 8347 7020 / sophie@tpr-media.com
Picture publicity: Jamie Fry, 020 7306 8251, jfry@Channel4.co.uk