‘I was always yawning in the morning. The real reason left me speechless'

A-levels can be a very stressful and exhausting time for many students, and it's not uncommon for a young person to feel tired and worn out from the demands of studying and coursework.

But for Ikram Gacem, those levels of fatigue were far more extreme that what her peers were experiencing, and she began to wonder if there was something more sinister going on.

She was just 18, studying in her final year at college, when she began to struggle - feeling tired all the time and sleeping for hours when she got home.

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At first she presumed her symptoms were down to the fact it was her last year.

"I would wake up in the morning, I'd be kind of yawning all the way down to college. As soon as I’d get in, I would go to sleep and then I'd wake up maybe, like eight, nine, and I'd have lots of work to do.

"All the teachers were pushing because again, exams, A Levels. Not only was it a stressful moment for everyone as a Year 13 student, but I feel like I wasn't quite catching up with everything and I was kind of always running behind," she said.

Ikram went to see her GP and says she was repeatedly diagnosed with anaemia as her white blood cells were quite low.

"I tried to take iron tablets but they didn’t do much. I was going back and forth to the doctors and then, and during the pandemic where I was doing work online, it was the same thing… I'd be very lazy, sleep a lot."

The then teen noticed 'a little lump' appear on her right collar bone. She didn't think anything of this for the first week it was there, however when it had been there for a second week, Ikram and her mum decided it was time to contact her GP again.

"We spoke