I thought I’d give this a go as sometimes find 180 characters too small for my ramblings. Firstly, I’d like to blame my spelling and grammar on my brain tumour Glioblastoma, but famously as my oncologist told my wife Jen and I that the bit of brain they’d had to remove might effect my spelling and memory, her head fell into her hands. “But he is already a forgetful dyslexic”.
So we are a team of 6 My wife Jen, Joe 18, Curly 16 Esme 14. We still have Lewi who sadly died in March 2019, aged 19. He is always with us.
So what can you do? Well firstly why start this now. It’s been a year now since my diagnosis. That was followed by brilliant surgery, 30 days of radiotherapy and this week I finished my 9th round of chemotherapy all brilliantly looked after by Salford and latterly The Christie (for those of you not from NW England) the Christe is something that Mancunians are particularly proud of. It’s a world leading gold standard cancer hospital.
In fact it’s almost assumed that once you enter it’s hallowed doors you’re nearly cured. Obviously that’s not the case for many people, but they certainly do their very best
Unfortunately my Glioblastoma is rather disproportionate, in the league of your not getting out of here alive cancers, it is premier league. There is no cure so at diagnosis you go into palliative care. Which does sound scary, but mostly I think because we associate it with hospices, actually on average it’s got a 2-4 year prognosis with 5% making it to 5 years. There are obviously outliers of which I intend to be one.
So what is irritating and explains why I am along side others campaigning, is the lack of research that goes into this particular cancer, whilst this is the biggest cancer killer of the under 40s and I’m relatively old, it gets only 2-3% of research funding, because brains are a bit complicated, you don’t get much bang for your buck
So I’m working with Brain Tumour Research, to raise awareness and some funds. One day of research costs 3.5k
Whilst I can I do it by staying fit and doing stuff like the C2C to raise monies. But by staying fit I also am preparing myself for further surgery if necessary. So I’ve started this because along side some of my friends and my eldest lad Joe and his mates I start the cycle tomorrow and will keep you all posted
Braintumourbergin 