JADE MASON probably should not be alive today. Just six years ago the East Bergholt youngster was lying seriously ill in Great Ormond Street Hospital having been told by doctors that she only had 72 hours left to live.

JADE MASON probably should not be alive today.

Just six years ago the East Bergholt youngster was lying seriously ill in Great Ormond Street Hospital having been told by doctors that she only had 72 hours left to live.

Jade, who was 12 at the time, had been suffering from a mystery illness which caused her to dramatically lose weight and she had been coughing up blood.

Her devastated family were at her bedside while relatives rushed back from as far as Australia as everyone feared the worst.

It was not known at the time but Jade was one of just four people in the UK to suffer from an extremely rare auto immunity disease which causes her white blood cells to attack any of her body’s organs which get in the way triggering massive internal bleeding.

With nothing to lose her mother, Alex, agreed for her daughter to go on to a trial drug which ultimately helped save Jade’s life.

During the past six years the Colchester Sixth Form College student has undergone 15 major operations and is on specialist drugs to try to prevent the internal bleeding and damage.

But rather than lying back and feeling sorry for herself the teenager is warming up to do this weekend’s London Marathon as a “thank you” to the staff of the hospital who have cared for her during the past six years.

Jade will also be running the marathon in memory of Daniel Courtney who she spent many hours with in hospital before he died aged just 16 months.

She will be joined by her boyfriend Andy Fone and best friends Kaytee Crossley and Ben O’Shea for the 26-and-a-bit miles around the capital.

Because of her illness, training has been limited so she can be as fresh as possible for the task ahead which her mother has told her is “madness”.

Speaking to the EADT Jade declared: “I don’t care if I am the last person to finish – I just want to get round.

“I remember when I was feeling really low and one of the nurses said to me ‘what do you want to do in the next five years?’

“I love running and I could not do that any more but wanted to raise money for the hospital so said I would love to run the London Marathon one day in my life.

“The older I have got, the lazier I have got, so I may as well do it now,” she joked.

“At one stage I never thought I would get better. I will never be cured, there is no known cure at the moment and I live each day as it comes.”

Jade’s illness is so rare that she is now a “studied medical case” and well enough to be at college studying to become a nurse for GOSH.

Although no-one can be sure what caused her illness yet, it is thought that it could have been a virus which lay dormant in her body for years after she suffered from the salmonella bug as a baby.

Jade and her friends have already raised more than �400 for the hospital, beating their original target of �300, but anyone wanting to sponsor her can do so at www.justgiving.com/londonmarathonforgosh