March is Brain Tumour awareness month in the UK…and I’ll bet you weren’t aware of that. (Ok, some of you might have been)
In general, I keep my private life out of my blog but this week I’m making an exception.
But first some facts….
Did you know that brain tumours are the biggest killer of adults under 40 and children?
Brain tumour research represents around 1% of the national spend on cancer in the UK. (The biggest spend is on breast cancer – £52M which equates to 7.76%)
In general, only 17% of people diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour will survive 5 years or more. (This compares to around 70% for breast cancer)
Over 12000 people in the UK are diagnosed each year with a primary brain tumour, including 500 children.
Over 5300 people lose their lives to a brain tumour every year in the UK.
An estimated 88000 adults and children in the UK are currently living with a brain tumour.
I’ll pause here to let you digest these facts…..
The Big Green Gummi Bear, my late husband, lost his life to a brain tumour (Glioblastoma) in October 2023. He was only 54 years old.
The Big Green Gummi Bear was first diagnosed on 26 August 2020, at the height of Covid. I chose not to share any aspect of his journey – our journey- via my blog as I felt it was something too personal and too raw to share. To an extent, it still is.
In October 2020 I reached out to MacMillan Cancer Support’s online community for support. I felt lost and scared and simply needed someone to hold my hand and guide me through the nightmare that was unfolding in front of me. MacMillan’s community was there for me and still is. I was invited a few months later to train to become one of their Online Community Champions. It’s a volunteer role I fulfil still on a daily basis. I felt after The Big Green Gummi Bear passed away that it would be selfish of me to withdraw my time and support from that community just because I didn’t necessarily need them anymore. Supporting the users of that community has in fact helped me with the healing process we call grief. If something I say helps someone to feel less lost, less useless and less scared then, its worth the pain of ripping the scabs off these partially healed wounds.
Over the past few years, I have written several blogs for MacMillan’s community blog space that have been well-received.
To help raise awareness of the impact that a primary brain tumour diagnosis can have not just on the person with the diagnosis but their friends and family too, I’d like to share the links to some of these blogs here.
Caring for a partner with a brain tumour – a Community member’s story – Macmillan Online Community
“I’m fine”: how do you really cope as a carer? – Macmillan Online Community
If you or a friend or family member has been impacted by a brain tumour diagnosis, here are some links that you may find supportive:
Macmillan Cancer Support | The UK’s leading cancer care charity
Brain Tumour Research | Together we will find a cure
Home – Brainstrust, brain tumour charity
Brain tumours | Cancer Research UK
Thank you for reading/listening
(image sourced via Google- credits to the owner)
Coral McCallum 