Your support made a difference to Tilly. This is her story as told by her father, Jason.
Around Christmas in 2020, Tilly started saying she was getting headaches and pain in her eyes. As it was during Covid, all her lessons were online and she was doing her schoolwork on her laptop.
The test came back okay but I told the optician that there must be something wrong. They rebooked her in for another test with eyedrops, which gave them a better view of the eye. That was booked for mid-February, but by that point her eye sight had become much worse. She wasn’t eating and was going to bed really early every night.
The optician couldn’t work out what was wrong, so they took a photo of the back of her eyes and spotted something abnormal in her optic nerves. They said we needed to go to A&E and have it checked, as they weren’t sure what it meant.
After the eye casualty had performed a number of tests, Tilly was sent for an MRI. The doctor took me into a side room and told me they had found a mass in her brain. At that stage they still weren’t sure what it meant but feared it was cancer. I had to tell Tilly, which as you would guess, wasn’t easy. But I felt she needed to know the truth.
Tilly’s tumour was inoperable because of its location in her brain and she started chemotherapy the following week. It was a gruelling process for us, but it worked.
Research into these types of cancer is invaluable in helping to give more children a fighting chance to survive.
Tilly is recovering really well and is currently making it to school for 5 out of 6 lessons a day, and is managing 1 or 2 full days at school. She struggles with anxiety, but is really persevering with trying her best. She has just completed her options for going into year 10 in September - ready for her GCSEs. She has selected Food & Nutrition and Art as two of her pathways.
I have been drawing portraits of the current 2022/23 Derby County Football Club team and am selling high quality prints of the artwork to help raise money for three charities. CBTRC, Derby County Community Trust and the NSPCC.
The artwork has had a very positive response and with several events coming up we are hoping to raise a decent amount for the charities and several of the players have been very positive in helping to spread the word on social media.
Take a look at Jason's art
I am currently training to complete the Derby 10k on behalf of CBTRC for Brain Tumour Awareness Month, and have already mananged to raise nearly £200 for CBTRC.
A lot of people still think that brain tumours in children are very rare and that most people still do not know the chance of survival is low compared to other cancers. Research into these types of cancer is invaluable in helping to give more children a fighting chance to survive, and hopefully raise this percentage to more positive outcomes.
Thanks to support like Jason and Tilly's, we can continue to strive to discover more effective and kinder treatments for these currently devastating cancers; helping children like Tilly live fuller and healthier lives.