Christchurch teenager James Kelso will live with a brain tumour for the rest of his life.

It is a daunting prospect, the 19-year-old says, but not as bad as discovering an orange-sized tumour in your brain and being given a month to live.

Five years ago, doctors gave the then Year 10 student that prognosis after discovering a large cranial pharyngioma at the base of his brain. They diagnosed the growth after his eyesight started fading, although he had suffered migraines and vomiting for several years.

"I was just real freaked out, but it sort of explained my being sick," Kelso said of the diagnosis.

Surgeons at Christchurch Hospital successfully removed the tumour during a 12-hour operation Kelso was not expected to survive. He returned to Hillmorton High School, needing only regular scans and medication to maintain his good health. He also had to regularly inject himself with growth hormones because the tumour had affected his pituitary gland, which is linked to height.

Soon after Kelso finished Year 13, routine scans revealed the tumour had returned. The teenager spent his first year out of school recovering from a nine-week course of radiotherapy at Dunedin Hospital.

"I freaked out when they said that `we think it's here again and we have to go do a whole other lot of treatment', but I found out a couple of months ago that it has shrunk two-thirds because of this therapy. It will stay this small size for the rest of my life.

"Well, it should stay in my head. It shouldn't do anything ... Sometimes I just think you just don't know. It's in there. What if it grows and they don't know?"

Kelso will have routine scans and takes 12 pills a day.

He has short-term memory loss, tiredness and is blind in one eye because of his brushes with cancer, but is now enrolled in a youth-work course and is contemplating part-time work next year.

"It's definitely changed my view of life," he said. "I think twice before I do things now, because I know life is so precious. It just goes; like a click of your fingers, it can be over."

The Canterbury and West Coast branch of CanTeen, which supports young people living with cancer, yesterday launched its annual bandanna appeal.

By KATIE WYLIE - stuff.co.nz