My name is Kate and I'm raising funds for my beautiful best friend Ellie, who has recently been diagnosed with an aggressive and rare brain tumour at the young age of 27.

On the 28th of July, Ellie went for an MRI scan after suffering some migraines and seeing her local GP. The last thing we could have ever expected was that the radiologist would tell Ellie she needed to go straight to Hospital as she could see a mass on the scans.

After waiting at the hospital for some time, she was seen by the head neurologist who explained to Ellie that she has a mandarin sized tumour in the thalamus region of her brain.

The following Monday, Ellie had surgery to drain some of the fluid and relieve some pressure from her brain, the surgeons also took a sample of the tumour to biopsy.

On the 27th of August we received the unfortunate news that Ellie has what is called a Diffuse Midline Glioma (DMG), this is an extremely aggressive and rare brain tumour that develops in the brain's midline structure as a result of a mutated gene (H3 K27-Altered)

Ellie will need to urgently undergo 6 weeks of intense radiation to try and shrink her tumour, as well as months of chemotherapy to fight the aggressive cancer cells. Surgery to remove the tumour is unfortunately not an option for her due to the tumours location. DMG is also known to almost always begin to grow again after any treatment so the treatment will not be able to clear the tumour from Ellies brain, however will hopefully give her some more time.

Unfortunately, as DMG is such an aggressive and challenging cancer, Ellie has been given a 12 month prognosis by her Doctors.

As you can imagine, this has come completely out of the blue for Ellie who had recently got engaged, bought a house and became an Aunty to beautiful Sydney. Ellie and her partner Jaleel had been thinking about starting a family soon, as well as starting to plan out their dream wedding.

Ellie will not be able to work for the foreseeable future and is unable to drive now or be left alone due to risk of seizures.

We are raising funds to help Ellie with any out of pocket treatments or medical expenses, general expenses whilst she’s not working and funds to go towards completing Ellies bucket list which includes her number one wish of getting to marry the love of her life, Jaleel.

If you have any experience or knowledge on Diffuse Midline Gliomas please also reach out!