DOZENS of East Lancashire people have given cash in memory of their hero Jack Walker, millionaire benefactor of Blackburn Rovers, to the charity named by his grieving family, Sargent Cancer Care.

Thousands of pounds have already been given to help children and teenagers with the killer disease, but how will the money be used? Reporter AMY BINNS met one young victim of cancer who was helped back to normality by the charity's workers...

EVERYONE remembers their 16th birthday -- the day when they officially leave childhood behind and move a step closer to adulthood.

But for Philip Gibson, it marks the most traumatic moment of his young life -- the day before the operation to remove his cancerous leg bones.

And though he hoped surgeons would be able to replace the bones with titanium implants, he knew he could wake up from the operation to find they had been forced to amputate his entire left leg.

The illness started a few months earlier when he noticed his knee was sore and swollen, but assumed it was down to a couple of knocks playing football.

Soon his leg was so painful he dragged it behind him as he walked, and he was sent for tests which showed he had a tumour on his knee.

Blackburn College student Philip, of Hall Coppice, Egerton, was sent for three months of radiography treatment at the Christie Hospital, Manchester, where he met Sargent Cancer Care social worker Judy Stirton. He said: "I felt angry with everybody a lot of the time. I was thinking 'Why me? What have I ever done to deserve this?' I even felt angry with the doctors because they kept trying to make me eat and drink when I felt so ill, even though I knew they were trying to help me.

"Sometimes I felt it was getting too much, and that's where Judy came in. She's someone you can talk to, even about things you can't tell your mum and dad about." Judy also supported Philip's parents Brian and Catherine. She attended the weekly doctors' meetings about patients, so she could explain treatments to Philip if he had been too ill and tired to understand when the doctors were free to talk to him.

Philip went to a Birmingham hospital for his operation, where nurses bought him a cake and hung bedpans and banners round his bed on his birthday.

He tried to put the operation to the back of his mind but knew that, if the cancer had spread further than the doctors had thought, they would not be able to save his leg.

He was too traumatised to remember much of the morning of the operation. He woke to feel tight bandages around his leg and knew it had been a success but was too sick to feel relief.

Another three months' treatment in Christie's followed before he could begin to recuperate. Sargent Cancer Care helped by sending him for a week's holiday in one of their Scottish homes in Ayr with other teenage cancer patients and several Christie nurses.

Although he had needed his parents' support while he was in hospital, Philip said it was great to get away from them after an intense year together.

The holiday helped him rediscover how to talk to people and make friends after a year of just being "a patient".

He said: "All the time I had been in hospital, they had been trying to get me to eat. The doctors would tell me to have as many McDonalds and chocolate bars as I liked, but I just didn't want to.

"I had lost loads of weight. When I was on holiday, we all used to order huge takeaways and sit around eating and talking.

"I found it really difficult talking to people at first because I had been shut out of the world for 11 months. It was great to meet people who had the same experiences." He soon adjusted to the feel of the £4,000 implants and a year later, the charity arranged an activity holiday for recovered cancer victims at a YMCA hostel on Windermere. Nurses also came so even youngsters who had suffered brain tumours could try out potholing, abseiling and canoeing safely.

Philip said: "Patients from all over the country came. It made me realise how lucky I've been when I heard what other people had been through. It helped give me my confidence back -- I could do things I thought I would never be able to do."

Since then, Philip has spread his wings further on a holiday abroad with friends -- although he needed a letter from his consultant to go through customs as his leg sends metal detectors haywire.

He can no longer play football and has been warned that intensive sports will wear out the implants faster -- they will probably need replacing in 25 years -- but he's still determined to get the most out of life.

"I can't dance, but I couldn't dance before," he joked. "Even walking wears it out but I feel like I've been given this gift and I'm going to use it."

Donations in memory of Jack Walker can be sent to Sargent Cancer Care for Children, 161 Hammersmith Road, London, W8 8SG.