In late January 2024, after suffering headaches and an irregular but sharp pain in my head, I went to see my GP who suggested I get an MRI scan done. In that scan we discovered a tumor growing on my brain which would need surgery to remove.
Now this is not the normal sort of content I post on the Internet. I prefer upbeat, carefree, happy stories of adventure and travel with more fun and less tumour. But when I was told I had a brain tumour I spent a lot of time browsing the Internet not for medical info, but to find other people who were going through, or had gone through and recovered from, something similar to me.
I found other people’s stories incredibly empowering and it helped me come to terms with what was happening to me. Suddenly I wasn’t dealing with “the worst health news I’ve had in my life so far”, instead I was simply facing “something that seems to affect lots more people than I expected and oh look most of them come out the other end without any issues whatsover so this is probably not as big a deal as I originally thought it was”.
I’m not downplaying a tumour, and I’m certainly not telling you how to respond to the news that you may have one either. But hearing other people’s experiences helped me, and I wanted to pay that forward by sharing mine.
So I made two videos about this, the first sharing the news of my brain tumour and how I was dealing with the build up to the surgery. The second was recorded 5 weeks after my brain surgery sharing how the operation went and how I was recovering.
I hope these videos help any of you reading this who may have been told you also have a tumour, or another health issue that has forced you to change the direction you were planning to head in. This is for you if you’re feeling like you’re alone right now. This is for you if you’re feeling scared. This is for you if you want to hear from someone who is on a similar path so you can hopefully realise you are anything but alone right now. There are lots of us out there.