Brain Tumour Recovery Help

 

We are hoping to raise funds to help our good friends Gareth, Jennie and their 3 lovely boys; a fellow military family.

 

On the 7th November 2021, their world was turned upside down. After 15mths of being unwell and trying to get some answers from the GP, Gareth went for a long awaited CT scan and was shockingly diagnosed with a very large and rare stage 2 chordoid meningioma brain tumour. Obviously this hit them all very hard.

Thankfully he was admitted for emergency surgery a week later and the neuro surgical team at Addenbrookes were amazing and after 9hrs of surgery they removed as much of the tumour as they could.

Now we all know Gaz is strong and a fighter, so it's no surprise that 3 days after major brain surgery, he was home and recovering amazingly well, although he obviously needs lots of rest and time to heal. He was readmitted two weeks later as he had swelling and fluid in his head, which was dealt with swiftly, and thankfully he was home with his family ready to look forward to Christmas.

His specialist has said that due to the rarity of the type of tumour, it has a 100% chance of regrowth, so Gareth now needs to endure 6½ weeks of intense radiotherapy; 5 days a week, to ensure that regrowth is limited.

 

Gareth has had to surrender his driving licenses, which as most of you know are his livelihood. Without his HGV license he is unable to do his job as a Tank Transporter for the British Army, until the doctors deem him medically fit, and at this time they don't know how long that could be. All we do know is that it will be at least 12mths before he can reapply for his license back.

Their 3 boys have been so strong and have held it together through these last couple of weeks bless them.

The last thing we want is for this family to go through any more difficult times worrying about their bills with a significantly reduced income whilst trying to negotiate numerous hospital trips and keeping things as normal as possible for their children.

If you know them, you'll know how much they do for others and for numerous charities, we think now is the time that we can support for a change, because they won't ask for help, they'll just struggle on, so please can we get behind them and show them the love and support they deserve.

Thanks all, Claire and Darren.