A young mum has been given just four months to live after headaches and eye discomfort led to a devastating diagnosis. Rachael Burns, 22, has been left “heartbroken” at the thought of leaving her one-year-old daughter behind after discovering she has an aggressive brain tumour.
Symptoms started eight months ago and included severe headaches, a sore eye and dizzy spells.
However, doctors initially put this down to dehydrated eyes and she was left waiting months without answers.
Rachael, from Belfast in Northern Ireland, recalled: “At the start they weren’t concerned enough to put through a referral to the hospital, so for months I wasn’t able to leave the house with my daughter because of these migraines.”
Eventually she was given a CT scan which revealed a mass on her brain that was leaning on her central nervous system.
An MRI scan showed Rachael had something called a diffuse midline glioma brain tumour, which was inoperable.
Speaking to Belfast Live, she said: “They said I would die if they even touched it so the only option for treatment at this point is radiotherapy for six weeks.”
But now Rachael, who is mum to Raeya, has learned she does not have long left to live.
She said: “Until last week I had in my head all of this hope that I would still maybe have a few years but at my appointment last week I had to get my mum to leave the room because she didn’t want to hear anything about the prognosis.
“The consultant then told me that anyone that has come in with the same thing that I have only has nine to 12 months to live, and I’ve shown symptoms for the last eight.
“I was told to assume that that was the case and try to make the most of the next four months.
“I left that appointment with no real hope and I didn’t know how to tell my mum and the rest of the family, I didn’t want them to get upset. It felt like everything had just been taken away from me at that point.
“Everyone has said about just how brave I have been but I just think that if I let myself get really down I’ll just sort of spiral. I think that once people lose hope like that their bodies sort of give up as well.”
The heartbroken mum has started writing birthday cards for Raeya to open in the future.
“Whenever I find out at first about the diagnosis I ordered loads of different envelopes and stuff so that I can write all her birthday cards for her for when I’m not here to give her them, so that stuff just isn’t easy,” she said.
Together with her partner Robert and other family members, Rachael is now fundraising to get to Germany for a potentially life-extending treatment known as ONC201.
So far they have raised more than £38,000 of a £60,000 target.
To donate visit gofundme.com/f/3jrjd4-support-a-young-mother-battling-terminal-cancer.
Rachael added: “There have been different trials and in many cases this has prolonged people’s lives. But because the NHS is so limited in what it can offer, we have to look at different countries and that’s how Germany came about.
“This is really the last chance for me to be able to spend extra time with my family so we are just going to throw everything at it.”
According to the NHS, the most common signs of a brain tumour include:
- Headaches
- Seizures (fits)
- Persistently feeling sick (nausea), being sick (vomiting) and drowsiness
- Mental or behavioural changes, such as memory problems or changes in personality
- Progressive weakness or paralysis on one side of the body
- Vision or speech problems.
If you experience any symptoms you should speak to your GP.