A Leyland man was initially told he had contracted a tropical virus while travelling in Thailand, but it turned out to be a brain tumour.
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00:00I spent about 10 days in this hotel in Chiang Mai, just predominantly sleeping, trying to
00:25get better so I could continue with my travelling. And things just weren't getting better. Being
00:33so far away from home, I knew something wasn't right and I knew I had to get back to England.
00:40So I spoke to the lads and eventually they agreed that we were going to go home. I didn't
00:45tell my mum about all the symptoms I was going through whilst away travelling because they
00:50didn't want her to worry. So we made the decision to go to Preston A&E and at this
00:57point I was in quite a bad way. I hadn't been eating or drinking. After being in hospital
01:02for around 8 days, I finally got an MRI scan. Whilst being in the scanner, I felt quite
01:13sick. I had to get out of the scanner but luckily I managed to get about 20 minutes
01:17of the scan done to see this mass on the back of the brain. They said we're going
01:23to have to do, it's looking like we're going to need emergency surgery. My mind started
01:29going at 360 mph at this point, thinking the worst. Fortunately I had a successful surgery.
01:38I finally got discharged from Preston Hospital after being in there for 3 and a half weeks.
01:44I got discharged 7 days after the surgery and I was back on my feet. It was then when
01:51a nurse from the teenage cancer unit rang me to arrange me to go back into Preston to
01:57get the results. They gave me the shock then. My double blastoma. It makes me a bit emotional.
02:11It was the shock then and I thought I'm just going to have to get on with this. I got referred
02:18to Christie's in Manchester to have the proton beam. As proton beam therapy, comparing it
02:23to conventional radio is obviously a lot safer, less side effect. I was very grateful for
02:29that. I had 6 weeks of intense proton beam therapy at the Christie's centre. It all went
02:37really well, ran dead smoothly. 12 months down the line, I've had 2 clear scans. I'm
02:43currently waiting for my 12 month check up to come back. Everything's fine, life's slowly
02:49getting back to normal.