A mum went through her daughter’s wedding knowing that she had a brain tumour. Kelly Doran was diagnosed the day before the celebrations and kept it quiet until afterwards.
Kelly, from Garston in Liverpool, had a seizure last October. At the time, doctors put it down to the fact that she had epilepsy as a child.
But the seizure continued – and got worse. Mum-of-four Kelly was then taken into hospital for scans.
The next month she went to hospital with husband Gareth and was told she had a brain tumour, believed to be stage three. It was November 18, the day before her daughter’s wedding.
But Kelly held back telling the rest of her family, putting on a brave face through the nuptials to make sure her family had the best day possible. The 44-year-old has had a series of health problems in the past six months.
The former NHS employee has had complications following surgery in December that saw surgeons remove a chunk of the tumour. Her eldest daughter, Georgia Foreman, told the LiverpoolECHO about the heartbreaking news her mum has received.
The 26-year-old student nurse said: “In October she had a seizure and no one had a clue what was going on. An ambulance came because she wasn’t breathing properly.
“She was taken to hospital and because she had epilepsy as a child they put it down to that and sent her home with epilepsy medication. She had another seizure a few weeks later but was told by the hospital if it didn’t last a certain amount of time and she came around OK she should stay at home.
“She had a few of them, but then in November she had a really bad seizure, came out of it then had another really bad seizure, so she was rushed to hospital. They finally did an MRI scan, did all the checks and discovered that she had a tumour.
Kelly Doran with husband Gareth and children Georgia, Chloe, Sophie and Buddy
(Image: Georgia Doran)
“Then on November 18, she and my dad went to an appointment the day before I was getting married, didn’t tell anyone and three days later they sat us all down and told us that she had a brain tumour.”
In January, Kelly, mum to Georgia, Chloe, 22, Sophie, 13, and Buddy, six, began her chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment to treat the stage four glioblastoma. But, during a four-week chemotherapy break, she developed bacterial meningitis that has pushed her treatment back indefinitely, with doctors wanting a fourth eight-week break depending on whether the growth of the tumor begins to accelerate again.
The family is now raising money in order to explore treatments further afield, with Georgia claiming that the method of treatment has not changed in two decades. She said: “After doing research we found that the treatment for glioblastoma hasn’t changed in 20 years so it’s a basic package of radiotherapy and chemo.
“The two together can shrink the tumour, especially if it’s inoperable, but because it’s such an aggressive tumor I feel like there’s not a lot of funding that goes into it in the NHS. As my mum puts it, you feel like they’re waiting for you to die.
“There’s not a lot they can do in the NHS and there’s not a lot of evidence that other treatments do work but in the likes of Germany and America there is extensive research into this type of tumor and they’ve had some success stories.”
