A DOCTOR diagnosed with cancer has beaten the odds to become a father.

Andrew O'Shaughnessy, 29, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in his first year at medical school nine years ago, and was told treatment would leave him sterile.

But after being persuaded to have his sperm frozen, he and his wife Catherine, 27, are celebrating Christmas with three-week-old Thomas, the baby he never thought he would never ever see.

''I was already in the advanced stages of Hodgkin's disease when they took the sample and after tenyears in a refrigerator it doesn't look good.''

After a year of chemotherapy and radiotherapy Andrew, who is now a registrar with North Cumbria Health Authority, returned to medical school at Newcastle University where he met his future wife Catherine, now 27.

After three unsuccessful attempts at artificial insemination, the couple began a programme of IVF at Newcastle's Centre for Reproductive Medicine.

Describing the baby as a ''miracle", Andrew, from Jesmond, Newcastle, said: ''It's just fantastic to have Thomas with us now.

"We were just thinking today what Christmas would have been like if the treatment had not worked."