I was diagnosed with a brain tumour the size of a golf ball and given just one year to live

1st January 2021

Suzanne, a wife and mum-of-two from Aberdeen, had just celebrated her 36th birthday in the summer of 2014. Her family were looking forward to the next few months, which were filled with exciting plans. But then she started having headaches that no amount of paracetamol would relieve.

Suzanne and her daughter smiling for a photo at a wedding

"2020 was a strange year. We learned to appreciate the simple things in life and yet the most normal things seemed so far out of reach."

But this wasn’t the first time my family had felt so uncertain. In 2014, I was diagnosed with a brain tumour the size of a golf ball and given just one year to live. 

I’d noticed I was having problems reading and writing. Sometimes, out of nowhere, I wouldn’t be able to speak or react to things happening around me. Then one morning I woke up with an excruciating headache, struggling to breathe.

As I sat in the doctors waiting room, I knew something wasn’t right but hoped so hard I was wrong. The doctor sent me straight for a scan. Unfortunately, I was right.

Suddenly all of the normal things we had planned that year seemed so out of reach.

Our children, Max and Lauren, were just seven and four. Lauren was starting school and Owen and I had been looking forward to taking those ‘first day’ photographs. 

"Instead, we were having to prepare ourselves and the children for what lay ahead."

My only hope was that someone could find a treatment that could give me more time. And incredibly, they did. Thanks to cancer research, like the projects funded by Worldwide Cancer Research, and the kindness of people like you, I defied the odds and I'm still here today.

But sadly it isn’t all over for me, as part of my tumour could not be removed. 

Like many people with cancer, I live every day knowing it could be my last – that’s why lifesaving cancer research must continue.

"I try to stay positive and the more years go by, the more hopeful I am that new treatments and cures will be found."

But those breakthroughs can’t happen without funding as much new cancer research as possible.

As a charity entirely reliant on donations from kind supporters like you, Worldwide Cancer Research urgently needs your help to start new cures around the world.

Will you become a Curestarter today and help fund pioneering projects from world-class scientists? 

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