Hi there,

My name is William and I am 13 years old. I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour 6 months ago, I have always been a bit clumsy which was put down to dyspraxia, plus I’m a dyslexic but I didn’t let this get in my way enjoying school, sports clubs and Scouts. I developed a hand tremor and was referred to a Paediatrician who thought it was something called an essential tremor but he wanted me to have an MRI scan of my brain to make sure nothing else was going on. When I had the scan in November 2020 we had the worst news imaginable, a large tumour in my 3rd ventricle (the middle of my brain) was found and our lives changed. My family and I were all absolutely devastated but the NHS team at the QMC (Nottingham) Paediatric Oncology department were and have been amazing in supporting us. I underwent brain surgery after the MRI scan to relieve the fluid build up in my brain because the tumour was blocking the drainage. The biopsy taken gave a diagnosis of a tectal plate Pilocytic Astrocytoma, a slow growing tumour that, depending on where it is situated, can be treated by removal and follow-up scans to confirm it isn’t growing back. Unfortunately, my tumour is situated by the brain stem and thalamus and isn’t operable without significant risk of damaging the sensitive area around it. So I’m undergoing weekly chemotherapy to try and shrink it. In the meantime, I’m trying to live as normal life as I can and I still enjoy School, Scouts and other activities. I really want to spread awareness about brain tumours, my Oncologist suspects it has been with me for a long time but there’s no way of telling, i had no headaches, fits or symptoms other than my clumsiness and later developed a tremor. Brain tumours kill more children and adults under the age of 40 years than any other cancer and receive under 1% of cancer research funding from the government. I think this is a really sad situation as there are amazing people in the NHS, their associated universities and research organisations who could do far more with a bigger share of the funding available for cancer research. So I also want to raise awareness to try and address the under-funding for brain tumour research. I want to raise money for the Brain Tumour Research charity https://www.braintumourresearch.org to directly help fund their vision of finding a cure for brain tumours, with my family, friends and school helping arrange a number of events to achieve this.

Thank you for reading my page.

Will

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