Brain Fog Blog

So I suppose a good place to begin this story, would be the start.  I don’t think I will be able to write this in a complete straight line, there may be some back and forth.

This all began in early January 2024.

I was still recovering from a very boozy Christmas. On top of this, just before the holidays I had Covid for the first time. Although it’d been a few weeks since Covid, I didn’t feel the same afterwards.

Coming back to work after Christmas and New Year is always rough, but this was made a thousand times worse when my company made it mandatory for us to come to the office three days a week (up from one day a week).

My office is right in the heart of London and having just moved a few months earlier to the outskirts of the city, the idea of commuting on the tube at rush hour three times a week was not something I was happy about.

Anyway, I of course put up with this because… money.

In the first few weeks of January I was suffering with very painful and intense headaches. Although they were not constant, when they came on it was enough to make me feel nauseous.

Headaches were something I was not unfamiliar with. I’ve had bad eyesight since I was 10. I usually know it’s time to get my eyes tested whenever I begin to get strained vision or some headaches, but since it had only been two months since my last optician’s check in, I knew I was good there.

It wasn’t bad eyesight so the next assumption was the headaches were from long-Covid. Being the qualified medical practitioner I am (joke) this settled any anxieties I had around it.

By the end of January, the headaches were still around. I knew something wasn’t quite right so I decided I needed to speak to a doctor.

At the time Lauren had Bupa healthcare through work so I was fortunate enough to get a referral from a doctor to see a neurologist within two weeks.

Having now met many people at the hospital I realise how lucky I was to get this initial referral though private.

There’s an unbelievably scary amount of people who’ve had tumours misdiagnosed as migraines, vertigo or epilepsy coupled up with people not being able to get the tests they need due to our underfunded and broken health system. I’ve met people who had been misdiagnosed for years.

I’ve even been told by NHS staff how lucky I am to have had the tests when I did and as quickly as I did.

Moving along, by this time the headaches were actually beginning to get better (or so I thought) – and on the run up to my appointment I was beginning to think I should cancel it all together.

Of course, I didn’t do this. I went to the appointment and was assured that its very unlikely that I have anything serious.

The words the doctor used were:

“Most people get headaches and automatically assume they have a brain tumour, almost all of the time this isn’t the case.”

With this, I felt at ease. The doctor said it was a precaution but he wanted to send me for an MRI anyway.

A week later I went for my first MRI (I have probably had over two dozen since then). After the scan this started a period of about a month and a half where I was blissfully unaware of anything.

From about mid-Feb to the end of March I lived life as normal. I felt fairly okay and the severe headaches from January had all but gone.

I spent some time visiting friends, going on trips to Romania, Bristol and Cheltenham, and then visiting California in late-March.

At the start of April, Lauren and I had just come back from America and I was reeling from the pure joy of winning close to $1,000 on a trip to Reno and Las Vegas.

The day after coming back from the States I went straight back to my hometown Corby to see my family, but most importantly my Dad.

I’ve thought hard about how to go about writing this. This is not easy for me to do.

I will come back to write about my Dad’s journey at a later point, and hope to do him justice. Like many people in the UK my Dad was failed by our health system.

What is important to know at this point is that my Dad was suffering with Melanoma which had just been found to be Stage 4 in mid-March.

We were given a few options but the most promising was for him to undergo immunotherapy and hope that it would stop the spread of the cancer.

I really wasn’t sure about going to the States after we found this out but it was my Dad who encouraged me to do so, and worry less since he wasn’t due to start the treatment till April.

The day I arrived back in Corby was the day he did his first treatment.

Over the next week we saw him get gradually more and more sick. Becoming less and less himself as the days went by.

We were told that the treatment would make him ill, and I think we all assumed this was normal.

After being in Corby for a week I went back home to Watford as I had to go back to the office.

Probably within an hour of being back at home I got a call from an unknown number. It was the neurologist I had seen almost three months before.

This was really unexpected. I hadn’t really thought about the headaches or the MRI scan, if anything I assumed no news was good news.

Anyway this was about to change. I was told he had reviewed my MRI and they had found an “abnormality’ in my left frontal lobe.

The doctor told me that whatever it is has signs it could be a tumour, but he could not be certain.

This was a massive punch in the gut. I think I went through every emotion. Having not heard anything for months I figured that the headaches had just been a blip.

Evidently not.

The feeling I remember the most was anger. Anger that I hadn’t heard from the Doctor in so long. Anger that this was happening. Anger that my Dad was sick.

After having a long chat with Lauren, we decided that it would be best to remain calm as possible and not panic before we find out anything concrete.

Even now, as hard as it is, its really important not to lose yourself over a ‘what if’.

One thing I did decide to do was not let my parents know. I figured they already had enough on their plate at that moment.

One day later my Dad’s health worsened as a result of the immunotherapy. He was admitted to Leicester Royal Infirmary.

I took time off work for stress and after a few days went back to Corby to be with my Mum and visit my Dad in hospital.

Everything to do with myself then went to the back of my mind, I just wanted to see my Dad get better. Something my whole family thought was going to happen.

Then after 10 days in hospital my Dad passed away.

Foreword

This is the first actual blog post I’ve written and I have already found it both easy and very difficult. Looking back at this time after what feels like an eternity, brings up a lot of feelings.

I’m also currently working through my radiotherapy treatment, getting slightly more sick by the day and dealing with some hair loss.

The hardest part about writing this though has been how to approach things with my Dad. And as I said I really want to put the bulk of this in a separate blog/blogs.

Losing a parent is one of the shittiest things I’ve ever had to deal with. I never told my Dad about the “abnormality”. I’m glad that I didn’t.

But I feel like the worst part about his passing, aside from everything, is that I never got to talk to him about it. I think out of anyone he’d have known what to say.

My Dad suffered with two cancers in the last 10 years of his life. And he dealt with both courageously. He taught me so much about what it means to live your life to the fullest, and how I should live my life post-brain tumour diagnosis. I miss him every day.

In the next blog I plan to continue from mid-April to how I went from being wrongly referred to the Ear, Nose and Throat department by my GP to then within a month having full on brain surgery.