A mother in the U.K. is warning other parents after her teenage son’s rash and pain from the waist down transpired into something unimaginably dangerous.

Jessica, a mum-of-three living in Middleton, Greater Manchester, said she gave her 16-year-old autistic son Harvey paracetamol and ibuprofen to ease his “agonizing” pain, but no improvement was in sight. The pain, in fact, grew worse in just a few days, and caused Harvey mobility issues, Manchester Evening News reported.

Harvey’s reactions to his ache were in contrast to his history of high pain threshold, which was a red flag for Jessica, who took her son to Oldham Hospital's A&E department, where doctors “felt his back” and said Harvey's “muscles were tight.”

They sent him back home with diazepam.

A few days later, Harvey started experiencing debilitating pain and would cry in his room at night. Jessica decided to run him a warm bath to try and soothe his pain, and that’s when she noticed the rash had spread to his arms.

"As he came out of the bath he noticed a rash coming on his arm and said he had it on his feet. All I could describe it as was speckly, like burst blood vessels where the blood comes to the surface of the skin," Jessica told the Manchester Evening News. "We had taken him to A&E because it had escalated to the point where he couldn't walk. He was in absolute agony."

This time around, Harvey was given morphine and a medical consultant carried out a few blood tests, before breaking it to his family that the teen has leukemia, a cancer that forms in blood tissues, affects the bone marrow and the lymphatic system.

The kind of leukemia that Harvey had was the most common one to affect children.

"In my head, I just knew we were going to get the worst news from those results, which we did. Within the day they were telling us the treatment plan for Harvey," Jessica said.

Harvey was transferred to Royal Manchester Children's Hospital that same day. There, he underwent a four-week long treatment of grueling and intensive chemotherapy as part of the induction stage. Now, Harvey remains bedridden and has been prescribed three lots of medication each week.

The heartbroken mother said Harvey was struggling to cope with the side effects of the chemo sessions.

"They are going to essentially blast him with the chemotherapy. It's absolutely horrendous," Jessica said. "He has become nauseous, lethargic, and is hardly eating anything. It totally weakens his whole immune system."

Doctors are now uncertain about Harvey’s fate, and have no clear idea whether he will remain bed bound or on the road to recovery. However, they are holding out hope that recovery is possible due to his age.

"Harvey could be stuck there for months, it all just depends on how his body reacts, although because of his age, they do generally have positive outcomes," Jessica told Manchester Evening News. "It's an absolute whirlwind, an emotional rollercoaster, but from going through this we know how important it is to not just accept the first answer you're given if you feel something is wrong especially because children and teenagers have falls or bumps all the time, but it could still be something sinister. My fear is other teenagers could present with these pains and not know they are at risk. They just need simple blood tests to get the answers and rule it out."

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