Race to tick off bucket list

Dire prognosis in battle with leukaemia won’t stop 24-year-old

Two months ago, Jarred Townsend was told he had two weeks to live. Now, the Upper Hutt 24-year-old is racing to tick off items on his bucket list and make as many memories as he can, while still holding out hope for recovery from the cancer he discovered less than two years ago.

A Givealittle page has raised $8000 so far to go towards helping him do everything on his list.

Townsend’s battle with leukaemia began in late 2015, when he woke in the night with searing back pain.

He made a trip to the hospital for painkillers and a blood test — he didn’t expect to be told the next day he’d developed a type of cancer most common in people aged over 60.

He has acute myeloid leukaemia, a form of cancer which causes an overproduction of abnormal blast cells.

As Townsend puts it, “you end up with all these useless cells that don’t do anything”.

The cells crowd the bone marrow and prevent it from making normal cells. “I had no idea to expect anything like that just from a sore back.” He said he was in a state of disbelief at the diagnosis.

“I didn’t really know what to think, didn’t really know what leukaemia was or even what cancer was about . . . it was like, ‘ what? no way’.”

The average age people are diagnosed with this form of cancer

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