Two years ago Sebastian Watt-Bonar's friends and teachers shaved their heads to raise money for the hospitals that treated him.
A bone marrow transplant saved his health, but Seb says it took much more than that to get through life during and after cancer.
A bone marrow transplant saved his health, but Seb says it took much more than that to get through life during and after cancer.
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00:00Without my friends I wouldn't be here, I'll be honest.
00:02Because my friends, they gave me motivation and all that and they were, you know, distractions
00:07from everything that was going on. So without them it would be a completely different story.
00:13The message from a now 17-year-old who got through chemotherapy,
00:17radiotherapy and a bone marrow transplant to now be cancer-free.
00:22But without his friends it wouldn't have been possible.
00:25This was Sebastian Wattbonner two years ago, watching on from his hospital bed
00:30while his school friends in Cranbrook shaved their heads,
00:32all to raise money for those hospitals who helped save his life.
00:36At just 15-years-old, Seb was diagnosed with leukaemia.
00:40Now that bone marrow infusion has given him the all-clear.
00:43But while Seb and his family feel relief from those two words,
00:47the tricky few years have taken a toll on him.
00:50When I started treatment, I thought that it's just going to be all physical.
00:55It's just going to be, I know it's going to be physical, it's just going to be tough.
01:00But, you know, I didn't really think about the mental side of it.
01:05I'd say through treatment, I had a goal, right, to, you know, to get better, to get well,
01:11just like take the next step. So when it was all coming to the end of everything, you know,
01:18that's when the kind of the more mental things come with, like,
01:22like the insecurities and like the self-confidence and then like
01:26just processing like actually what just happened to you.
01:31He says he'll be in debt to the nurses who cared for him
01:34and the bone marrow donor for the rest of his life.
01:37I think about, I just think about them every day,
01:39doing all the charity workers and all the kitchen staff, literally everything.
01:45Like, I think about them every day because, like, I just think about,
01:49randomly, like, I'm, you know, I'm walking down the street, I was like,
01:52there's, you know, one reason you're walking right now and that is because of them.
01:57And it was that attitude and determination from the very start that helped Seb and his
02:02family through something that could have been devastating,
02:06echoed by what his parents told me back in 2023.
02:11It's frightening, sometimes, and it's a big thing.
02:17But Sebastian said very early on, and it was a quiet moment, he said that,
02:22Dad, my first thought, my very first thought when I heard this diagnosis
02:27and I understood what it meant was, I'm going to survive.
02:33Seb's not battling to just survive anymore.
02:36Instead, working out how to live as any other 17-year-old boy would.
02:42Abbey Hook for KMTV.