A YOUNG cancer patient is speaking out in a bid to help others.

At just 20 years old, Dean Eastmond has been given a 50 per cent chance of survival after being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer.

But the Birmingham University student is writing a blog in between gruelling chemotherapy sessions – and has even found time to fight for LGBT rights when it comes to fertility treatment.

Dean, a former Budmouth College pupil, wants to raise awareness of Ewing’s Sarcoma, as early diagnosis can increase chances of survival by up to 20 per cent.

He hit the headlines last year after speaking out about being raped aged just 16 in the summer of 2012. Since then he has gone on to write for a number of publications including the Independent, Gay Star News and the National Student, as well as co-founding his own online magazine, HISKIND.

But in May he found himself in hospital having tests on a lump in his ribs he initially thought was a wound from a drunken night out.

An emergency CT scan revealed it was a tumour and, with his boyfriend and family beside him, he was told the news he had cancer.

He has moved back to Weymouth while he receives treatment.

Dean has had two bouts of chemotherapy, lasting 72 hours at a time and leaving him in hospital for a week, and faces another 12 more. He has also been approved proton beam therapy treatment in America.

But despite feeling sick and exhausted from the treatment, and losing his hair, which he said ‘made him feel like a cancer patient for the first time’, he still finds the energy to write.

“Every single day before cancer I was writing, and to be told I’m not going to be able to do that any more because of the treatment, that was the one thing that tore me to pieces. Writing for me is a method of dealing with what I’m going through, so I started a blog, but since then lots of people have got in touch telling me how much it’s helped them, to know someone else is going through the same thing. Cancer can be very isolating.”