A mother has described her heartbreak after her 17-year-old daughter died with suspected sepsis just a week after being declared in remission from cancer following six rounds of chemotherapy. Jill Mitcheson, 44, from Ashington, Northumberland, said her daughter Hannah Riddell, 17, discovered a golf ball-sized lump under her arm in August 2024 and was rushed to hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system.
Hannah had finished school at Ashington Academy Northumberland and had plans to start a travel and tourism course at Newcastle College, but her plans were put on hold after the cancer diagnosis. The teenager underwent six rounds of chemotherapy before the family were overjoyed to learn on January 7 that Hannah was in remission, and they began planning a family trip to Mallorca to celebrate.
But on January 14, during a routine blood test, Hannah took a turn for the worse, enduring two fits before her heart stopped and her family were told: “She’s gone.” Now, the family are raising funds via a GoFundMe campaign to give her a “good funeral” and to “let her know what a fantastic person she was and just how many people loved her”, her mother told PA Real Life.
“Her dad and I were holding her hand and I knew she was gone,” Jill said. “It was just surreal, like it was not really happening and she was going to wake up – it happened so quickly, there was no warning.
“It was just the cruellest thing ever. Her whole life had been on hold. It was just the most devastating thing that could possibly happen.”
The first sign that something was wrong happened on the night of August 10 2024 after the family had returned from a meal with friends. Jill, a carer, said: “We were sitting in the garden because it was a nice sunny evening and she came down from her bedroom into the garden and said, ‘mum I need to tell you something’.
“My heart dropped and I thought, teenage girl, she better not be bloody pregnant. So I came into the kitchen and she said, ‘mum, I’ve got a lump under my arm’ and when we looked at the lump it was the same as the size of a golf ball. It appeared very quickly.”
The next morning, she was looked at by a doctor in the surgical unit in a hospital in Cramlington and had an ultrasound a couple of hours later, followed by a biopsy. “When they were sat in the ultrasound I saw them start to measure all the lumps – there were quite a lot of them – and I think it was at that moment I knew there was something not right about this,” Jill said.
The family were told it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma and a second scan revealed it was at Stage 4B – meaning the cancer had spread to various organs – with the cancer found throughout her neck, right through her torso and to her groin. “Hannah took the news better than anybody else,” Jill said.
“She just got on with it – she never wanted any pity.”
On August 21, Hannah began the first of six rounds of chemotherapy from the oncology department at Royal Victoria Infirmary, during which she had several infections and at one stage was “vomiting the entire time”.
During chemotherapy she was supported by boyfriend Kieron Stokoe, 18, who was with her “every step of the way” and would often stay up rubbing Hannah’s back and comforting her, Jill said. Then, on January 7, the family were delighted to be told that Hannah was in remission and would return to hospital for a routine blood test a week later and a scan three months later.
On January 14, however, Hannah returned to hospital for the blood test and was “very pale” and had been vomiting. At hospital, her breath then became ragged and she appeared to have a fit – then started complaining about extreme pain in her legs, to the point her mother “could not lay a finger” on them.
As Hannah had another seizure, the emergency team was called to the ward, and the room was suddenly filled with people. “Her eyes were rolling back in her head – she was panicking,” Jill said.“Her breathing was really laboured and she was really struggling.”
Hannah was then taken to the critical care unit and Jill began suspecting her daughter had sepsis. “At this point, I knew she was ill, but they never said critical and I never for one minute thought we were going to lose her,” Jill said.
“Some time passed, maybe an hour, and nobody said anything, and then a nurse came into the room and shut the door, and she had tears in her eyes. She sat down and she said, ‘I’m sorry Hannah is gone’. “I was confused because at no point was it mentioned that she had stopped breathing, her heart had stopped, anything. I looked at her in disbelief and I said, ‘what do you mean she’s gone?’.
“She said, ‘I’m sorry. About 55 minutes ago, her heart stopped and she stopped breathing and we’ve been trying to resuscitate her all this time and I’m so sorry but she’s gone’. I said, ‘I need to see her, I need to see her now’.”
Jill and Hannah’s father Michael went into the critical care unit, where they were still doing “brutal” heart compressions on Hannah, but when Jill held her hand she “knew she was gone”. Hannah had “so many plans” according to her mother, having had her ovary removed for preservation so that one day, she could have “two or three” children.
Paying tribute to her daughter, Jill said: “She has always been older than her age. “She has always been very wise. She was always very chatty, she talked very, very quickly at a very young age.She never really changed. She was always like that.
“She was like a second mother to her younger brother. She was so caring.”
The family have raised more than £3,500 via a GoFundMe to assist with funeral expenses and the family are awaiting the results of an inquest to determine why Hannah died. Jill said: “It’s massively helped not just financially but just keeping us going, knowing how many people care for us as a family, for Hannah.
“Even in how cruel this whole situation is, it just gives me some kind of comfort from the fact that so many people cared and are willing to help and it really has eased this whole situation.”
To find out more or to donate, visit the fundraising page here: gofundme.com/f/hannah-riddell.