Adrian Newman wants to be a doctor. More than that - he is going to be a doctor. A fifth-year student at the CBC in Cork, Adrian (17) is studying hard to get the results he needs to study medicine at UCC. He wants to be a paediatrician. It's his "one and only goal".

More specifically, he wants to be the kind of healer that helped him through when he was treated for Hodgkins Disease at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin. Everyone at the hospital told him the truth and talked him to directly about what was going on.

"They didn't treat me as a kid. They talked to me, not to my parents," he says.

Adrian was 12 years old when he was diagnosed with the cancer, shortly before Christmas in 1996. He'd had a lump in his neck since the previous June. Everyone was hoping it was a cyst. When he awoke from surgery, he learned that several glands had been removed. They were malignant.

"The gravity of the situation did not hit me," he says. After surgery, Adrian returned to a normal life, playing football and going to school as if nothing had happened.

Then, when he was 14, the cancer recurred. "It tore me apart. It was devastating. I thought I was clear, and then it came back. The cancer returned just when I'd got back into the swing of things."

Continuing in school, Adrian travelled to Dublin every six weeks for radiation therapy. He had chemotherapy as well, which brought him to "the depths of despair".

He was put in isolation at Cork University Hospital several times, which was depressing. He had TV and restricted visiting, but other than his parents - who kept him feeling strong and positive - he saw only nurses and doctors.

"I was so tired. But I never thought of giving up. I knew the treatment was going to last eight months, so I was counting the days," he says.

He studied through it all. Supportive teachers kept him up to date. One of six children (the eldest aged 26 and the youngest aged 6), Adrian was part of a warm and loving family. His parents (Kevin, a human resources manager with Dell, and Jo, a social worker) were always bright and hopeful and never let him down.

He kept his condition secret from his classmates. "I had been leading such a normal life, I wanted nothing to change. I'm sure they knew something was wrong. My face was all bloated from the tablets I had to take and my hair was falling out. But I got on with it."

His advice to others in his situation is "stay determined, stay on track, never stop believing that you are going to get better". Now that he is well again, Adrian has braved chronic hip pain (caused by avascular necrosis, a side-effect of chemotherapy) to play soccer with Douglas Hall, a "pretty good" team.

He'd love to see Manchester United play at Old Trafford some day. But even more, he wants to become a doctor so he can "give life back" to others. "I want to do for others, what the people in Crumlin did for me," he says.

Spending time at the Barrettstown Gang Camp in Co Kildare has been invaluable for Adrian, who has been there four times, for two weeks each time. He's learned that people who are sick are just like everybody else.

The world is full of young people such as Adrian, who've been dealt the worst hand you can imagine, but who shine like auroras of hope, never giving in to despair.