A DRUMCHAPEL teenager wrongly diagnosed with arthritis has been given just months to live.

Alix Cassidy, 17, told her GP last October her fingers had gone numb and she was finding it hard to use them.

She was sent home with painkillers and had more visits to her GP and A&E without success.

Doctors even said she should wait for a scheduled appointment for arthritis after Christmas, her mum Caron, 39, told the Daily Record.

She told the paper: “A few days before Christmas I took Alix to A&E as she had lost the use of her fingers over two months. Staff accused me of trying to rush the appointment and sent us home with painkillers.”

Alix, who couldn't even open Christmas gifts because of the problems, went private to get a second opinion.

A 10-minute reflex test confirmed to a neurologist that she needed an urgent MRI scan.

Just three hours later, doctors at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital said there was a tumour on Alix's spinal chord.

Caron said: “Alix lost use of her hands and left leg but she had no pain. It was only her back that was sore so they thought she might have an inflammatory disease.”

“Her surgeon told us he had looked at her biopsy and there was in fact no tumour, it was just a growth. “We were absolutely delighted but unsure what would happen because we knew something was wrong.”

Just before her 17th birthday in March, Alix went back to A&E after a fall.

Finally, at the end of April, a biopsy confirmed a cancerous tumour. The next day, Alix was told it was incurable.

A Go Fund Me has raised more than £15,000 to pay for private stem cell treatment, and Caron praised her daughter's strength and determination.

She told the Record: ”Alix is amazing. She has her moments when she cries and says I don’t want to die. She’s got her wee dog, her friends and her whole life ahead of her.

“She was supposed to be studying childcare. She’s so brave and she knows we are doing everything we can.

”The NHS convinced us for 14 weeks that there wasn’t a tumour and now they’ve told us she’s got two months to live.

“All those months she could have been receiving proper treatment. I’ve lost my job to become Alix’s full time carer. I’ll do everything I can to save her.”

A spokesperson for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde told the paper: "We understand this is a very difficult time for Alix and her family and fully realise how very upsetting this is for them.

"This is an incredibly complex case with a very difficult diagnostic process and we continue to do all we can to support Alix and to reassure her and her family of the appropriateness of the assessment, diagnosis and treatment in this case."

The Go Fund Me page can be found here.