From healthy to helpless in 166 days

Michelle McKay said her father George Strydom, from Surrey, started limping last summer. He had physio for a suspected sports injury, but when it didn’t improve he was admitted to hospital for an urgent MRI scan and had a full seizure while waiting for the results.

George’s case was discussed by the multi-disciplinary team three weeks later and he was then told he had a brain tumour. He wasn’t offered radiotherapy or chemotherapy because the specialist felt it would hamper his quality of life in the time he had left. George agreed but kept hoping for a miracle cure.

Now Michelle is raising funds for The Brain Tumour Charity in George's memory and said: “My dad was the picture of health. He played tennis and squash, would body surf and loved the outdoors. Towards the end of the summer last year, he developed a limp and put it down to a sports injury. The physio wasn't convinced and asked the GP to refer him for an urgent spinal MRI to check for nerve damage.

“As per local trust policy, the only method of getting an urgent MRI was to go through A&E and be admitted into hospital. There, the orthopaedic surgeon wasn't convinced that it was an injury either and asked for a neurological opinion. The neuro exam was normal, except for the loss of power to his leg. He was admitted and the following morning he had the MRI scan of his spine.

“Back on the ward, he waited impatiently to be discharged and was dressed and ready to leave when out of the blue his shoulder started to twitch uncontrollably. My mother went to find a nurse and when she came back, he was having a full seizure. The crash call went out and my mother was whisked away. At this point she phoned my sister and I and we grabbed our keys and made our way to the hospital.”

George was admitted to Intensive Care while his relatives paced the relatives’ lounge for what seemed like hours. When two doctors and a nurse walked in, Michelle knew that they were about to hear bad news. It was 27 September 2022.

She said: “The doctor explained that my dad was intubated and sedated to control his seizure. They then went on to tell us that they'd given him a CT scan to find out what had caused the seizure and that it had shown a lesion in his brain. I'll never forget that... That was the moment the line in the sand was drawn. A lesion. In his brain.

“Initially we were told that he was unlikely to recover from this seizure and that there was a strong chance he'd pass away in ICU without waking up. My brother made plans to catch an urgent flight over from America. Fortunately, my dad, being a stubborn man, refused to let that be the end and two days later he woke up.

“As a tongue in cheek joke, we asked him what the Wi-Fi password was, and he was able to tell us. We went from feeling as if there was no hope to feeling like we'd been given a second chance. We were euphoric!”

But the MDT (multi-disciplinary team) at St. George’s only met once a week and had a full agenda, so George waited nearly three weeks for a diagnosis. During that time, he worked hard with the physios to regain his strength, especially on the right side of his body which had been paralysed by the seizure.

Michelle took a family photo while awaiting the neurologist appointment and looking back at it, she remembers them all feeling happy and optimistic.

She said: “Having just got through a traumatic episode, we were looking to the future with hope. It's the last happy family photo I have. Half an hour later the neurologist explained that the lesion was a tumour and that it was cancerous. She then explained that brain tumours get classified into low or high grade and that this was a high grade glioma. My dad asked how long he had left to live, and she replied that it was likely to be months and not years.”

The neuro-oncologist advised that he wouldn’t benefit from any palliative radiation or chemotherapy and that it would cause the last part of his life to be even harder. George agreed but still spent hours on the internet researching brain tumours, desperately looking for a miracle cure and reading about clinical trials in other countries.

Michelle’s mum stepped into the role of carer until George needed Macmillan nurses. Eventually he stopped eating and began to fade away.

Michelle said: “In total he survived for 166 days from diagnosis. Not even six months. The diagnosis, the illness, the deterioration, the caring for him at home, the dying - all of that has changed us as a family. It's a shame to say that before this illness, even as a nurse, I was mostly ignorant about brain tumours. They only existed in my periphery and certainly I never imagined one of us being diagnosed with one. It was very much something that happened to 'other people'.

“Now we can't ever go back to that naivety again. We are all too aware of the shock and pain that people feel when they are told that their loved one has a brain tumour, and that it's incurable. That’s why we set up a charity page to raise funds in my dad's name, to help support The Brain Tumour Charity.

“It is our fervent wish that no family should ever be in this position again, but we realise there is a long way to go to get there. We feel it's up to us, in the 'bereaved by a brain tumour' camp to keep raising awareness and keep the pressure on government to invest in research. As for my dad, I like to believe that he's somewhere, completely restored to his former self; body surfing some waves somewhere.”

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/GeorgeStrydom

For more information about The Brain Tumour Charity, the research it funds and the support it offers, please visit www.thebraintumourcharity.org