A FAMILY doctor from Timperley was reunited with the young man whose life he helped save more than a decade ago.

Matthew Ash was just three-years -old when his mother, Lynn, took him to Doctor Brendon Smith at the Village Surgery in Grove Lane.

Now, 15 years later, Brendon will complete a fundraising bike ride through London in aid of Children with Cancer UK – a charity whose lifesaving research helps saves lives like Matthew’s every day.

“It was one of those events that has stuck in my mind ever since,” explained Brendon, 59.

“I took a blood sample because he looked seriously unwell. That was on the Friday afternoon. The pathology lab phoned me up later that day.

“That evening, I had to go round and say: ‘I’m sorry, you son has got leukaemia’.”

“I remember the night he came round to our house. I was wanting to bed and I remember him saying that we needed to go to hospital,” said Matthew an Altrincham Grammar School for Boys pupil.

Taken to Pendlebury Children’s Hospital, Matthew was treated from 2001 and given the all clear on his seventh birthday. Return checkups followed before a final visit just over three years ago.

Now a healthy 17-year-old, the keen sportsman is currently taking his A Levels.

“I’m very thankful for how quickly Dr Smith recognised there was something wrong. I wish him all the luck for his bike ride,” added Matthew, of Timperley.

Brendon was a GP in Timperley for 28 years between 1984 and 2013.

Now living in Arley, he works at Bridewater Hospital as a medical examiner for people emigrating to Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

“Matthew’s a success story,” he added. “Another doctor told his mother at the time that he wouldn’t have survived if he’d been treated twenty years previously.

“He was fortunate to be born in an era when treatment had moved on. Survival rates have gone from around 25 per cent to 90 per cent, thanks to research funded by charities like Children with Cancer.”

Sponsor Brendon’s bike ride at uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/BrenDanUnited