A YOUNG woman battling a life-threatening bowel disease has tied the knot with her sweetheart days before her risky medical treatment starts.

Beth Townsend – nee Dobson – married Ian Townsend at St Bartholomew’s Church in Redmarley d’Abitot in Gloucestershire on Saturday.

Mrs Townsend, of Blenheim Road, St John’s, Worcester, said it had been “a perfect day”.

Yesterday, the 20-year-old was enjoying a post-wedding barbecue with family and contemplating the trip to London tomorrow where doctors will install a heartline, ahead of an intense treatment of chemotherapy.

The chemo will be followed by a trial course of stem cells.

Mrs Townsend suffers with an aggressive and painful form of Crohn’s disease – a narrowing of the gut – which makes her immune system attack her own body.

In a last-ditch bid to tackle the disease, stem cells will be harvested from her body, her immune system shut down by chemo and the stem cells reintroduced to ‘reboot’ her immune system.

Although the treatment could kill her, Mrs Townsend said: “It’s this or nothing.”

She will stay on an isolation ward at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and her husband will be with her throughout.