UnTouchableBrain tumour
A brain tumour is a growth of cells in the brain that multiplies in an abnormal, uncontrollable way. Tumours are graded 1 to 4. Low grade — 1 and 2 — means non-cancerous: they grow slowly and rarely come back once treated. High grade — 3 and 4 — means cancerous, and more likely to return. A cancerous tumour is called primary if it started in the brain, and secondary if it spread there from somewhere else in the body; those are different situations with different treatment and outlook. Symptoms can include headaches, seizures, feeling or being sick that does not go away, drowsiness, changes in memory or personality, weakness on one side, and problems with vision or speech. See a GP if you have a headache that feels different from the ones you usually get, or if headaches are getting worse. Treatment can involve steroids to reduce swelling, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and people with non-cancerous tumours often recover fully.
This is a plain summary, not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for talking to your GP or your clinical team. For NHS information about brain tumour, speak to your GP or call NHS 111.
People who have talked about it
1 story, each one written in our own words from what the person said publicly themselves.
Caprice Bourret
Caprice Bourret on the headaches that started after a minor accident
Caprice Bourret was in training for a televised winter sports show when she had what she described as a very minor accident. The headaches started straight afterwards. Then her vision went — she said she was seeing ten of everything. She wanted to carry on. There was a live show that night and she kept insisting she was fine. It was the production's health and safety rules that made her see their doctor, and she has since said that the show she had been mocked for doing is the reason she is alive. The doctor sent her for a battery of tests and a full body scan. At the hospital a nurse told her she was fine, and then told her she needed to see the neurosurgeon. She was on her own when the neurosurgeon sat down and told her she had a brain tumour. She did not know at the time what benign meant, or whether what she had was cancer, and she has described that not knowing as the frightening part. A second full body scan checked that nothing had spread. She was then told it was benign — but that it was growing, and had to come out. The operation took seven and a half hours, with eleven people in theatre. Afterwards staff checked on her every twenty minutes. She now has, in her words, a bionic skull. She told almost nobody while it was happening. She told her partner, and she told her children she was going away for work, and she has said she got through it without a support system because she had not let anyone in. Speaking a month after the operation, she said it was the first time she had really talked about any of it. Nothing here is medical advice. If you have a headache that feels different from the ones you usually get, or headaches that are getting worse, the NHS advice is to see your GP.
Photographs, in order: Caprice Bourret by Polly4522 (CC BY-SA 4.0).