It’s Brain Tumour Awareness Week.
A year ago I knew nothing about brain tumours, but I was ten agonising days away from finding out.
I was working in my office when Billy bought me this balloon. “That’s me at school, Mummy.” 🧵
A year ago I knew nothing about brain tumours, but I was ten agonising days away from finding out.
I was working in my office when Billy bought me this balloon. “That’s me at school, Mummy.” 🧵
Billy’s life was all night terrors, bad tempers and tears. He looked washed out. He was too weak to walk anywhere. He had no energy. He didn’t want to leave the house. He would wake up crying and go to bed worrying about school.
He refused to do the clubs outside of school that he used to enjoy so much, even rugby up at Effingham.
He went from our easy going ray of sunshine to a kid at the end of his rope. His world was crumbling down around him, but he couldn’t tell me why or what was wrong.
He went from our easy going ray of sunshine to a kid at the end of his rope. His world was crumbling down around him, but he couldn’t tell me why or what was wrong.
The face he drew on this balloon was pretty much his biggest revelation.
I can hardly believe how much life can change in the space of a year. Billy’s was cruelly taken away and ours has changed beyond recognition, perhaps even beyond repair.
I can hardly believe how much life can change in the space of a year. Billy’s was cruelly taken away and ours has changed beyond recognition, perhaps even beyond repair.
The hell he went through. The things we have seen.
I still know nothing about brain tumours in general, but I do know about DIPG.
It is a monster that rips lives apart. It destroys little children bit by bit until there’s nothing left, their hearts no longer beating in their chest and no breath left in their lungs.
It is a monster that rips lives apart. It destroys little children bit by bit until there’s nothing left, their hearts no longer beating in their chest and no breath left in their lungs.
365 days ago he was alive. And now he’s gone.
Cancer has no strategy, it doesn’t think or plan. Cancer follows mutations that give its cells short-term advantages, like the ability to grow quickly. There might be evolutionary pressures,
but they aren’t about keeping the host healthy but instead for making individual cancer cells survive better than other cells. And in DIPG, with its terrifying 0% survival rate, it took our beautiful boy.
Cancer gives no fucks. Karma will never come for cancer. We must take it on ourselves.
If you’ve got any spare cash this awareness week, please consider donating to @AbbiesArmy the UK’s leading DIPG research charity. We’re working to launch Billy’s Battalion, but in the meantime, please donate in Billy’s name to Abbie’s Army. 🙏🏻
#braintumourawarenessweek #dipg
#braintumourawarenessweek #dipg
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