Girl, 16, and stepmother diagnosed with brain tumours months apart
‘It was the worst thing to hear after seeing what she went through,’ Daisy says
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Your support makes all the difference.A teenager has described the fear she felt when doctors diagnosed her with a brain tumour just months after her stepmother was given the same devastating news.
Tina Cranshaw, 51, was told she only had a year left to live in 2020 after being rushed to hospital having suffered from a debilitating headache and thinking she could smell gas.
Doctors originally thought the mother-of-three suffered a stroke, but tests soon revealed she had a terminal brain tumour the size of a golf ball.
In a shocking turn of events, Tina’s stepdaughter, 16-year-old Daisy, was told less than a year later she also had a brain tumour – only hers was not life threatening.
Daisy said Tina, who works for a charity, was on a Zoom video meeting at home in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, when colleagues first realised something was wrong.
“She started slurring her words and her face drooped, so her colleagues called an ambulance,” Daisy said.
Tina, also mother to Theo, nine, Imogen, 28, and Abbie, 31, was taken to Doncaster Royal Infirmary (DRI) where doctors initially thought she had suffered a stroke.
However, a CT scan revealed a shadow on her brain. Tina was then sent to Royal Hallamshire Hospital, in Sheffield, for a further MRI scan, which confirmed that she had a brain tumour.
“It was horrible,” Daisy said when recalling her stepmother’s diagnosis to South West News Service. “I was doing my mock GCSEs, so it was a really stressful time.”
On 2 October 2020, Tina underwent an operation to remove the tumour, which was the size of a “golf ball”. However, she was told she only had between six and 12 months to live.
Four months after Tina’s surgery, Daisy, of Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, said her own symptoms began. Initially, her GP put her headaches down to stress and when she went to A&E, medics told her she had a migraine.
But, during a face-to-face appointment with her GP in September 2021, Daisy told her GP she had developed a blind spot on the left side of her eye. Within weeks, an emergency MRI scan revealed a mass on her brain.
“It was the worst thing to hear,” Daisy told the SWNS news agency, “especially after seeing what my stepmother has gone through.”
She added: “Dad [was] gradually losing his wife, and I thought that he could also be losing me. It was horrible.”
Daisy said it was quickly discovered that some of her tumour was “dead, which is brilliant news”.
“I need to have scans every three months,” she explained, “but I’ve been told it’s not life-threatening and they don’t need to operate yet.”
The 16-year-old is now walking 10,000 steps every day this month to raise money for Brain Tumour Research, insisting there is a “lack of research into this devastating disease”.
“Not everyone is as fortunate as me to not have to have any treatment immediately like my wonderful stepmother,” she said, adding Tina is her “inspiration” behind the charitable cause.
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