Man, 26, with deadly brain cancer shares the common symptoms he mistook for the flu
Kieran Shingler, 26, from Warrington, suddenly began experiencing a headache, sore throat and runny nose on Bonfire Night 2022, that he initially suspected was Covid.
When he tested negative for the virus, he and his girlfriend, Abbie Henstock, 26, brushed off his symptoms as the flu.
But, in the following weeks he felt so unwell that he was struggling to keep food down and had 'excruciating headaches'.
Previously, his girlfriend said: 'He was so fit, he was doing a triathlon, working out.'
So, she added: 'We just knew something wasn't right—this wasn't our Kieran.'
Just two weeks later, when his condition worsened, his mother Lisa, who passed away last year, aged 52, called his GP.
The doctor told him go to Warrington Hospital in Cheshire, where they initially suspected he had meningitis.
But when a CT scan revealed he had a mass on the brain, he was blue-lighted to the Walton Centre in Liverpool, where they specialise in neurology.
There an MRI scan revealed a tumour was blocking fluid from going to his spine, so his girlfriend explained, he needed emergency surgery.
He underwent an endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV)—a procedure used to treat the build-up of fluid in the brain's ventricle.
Initially the surgery was successful, and Kieran began to feel better, so he went in for a second surgery.
This was a craniotomy, a procedure to remove as much of the tumour as possible, and take a biopsy.
But sadly, since the operation, he suffers from short-term memory loss, one of the side effects of the surgery.
If this wasn't traumatic enough, while waiting for the results of the biopsy, he started getting a fever and began screaming in intense pain.
The ETV surgery had failed, the doctors told them, so he was admitted to the hospital again for a surgery to fit an external shunt—to divert fluid to another part of the body.
Just an hour before the surgery, on December 29, 2022, the family were told he had a grade three astrocytoma—a fast growing cancerous tumour.
Symptoms of an astrocytoma tumour include headaches, difficulty speaking, changes in vision, cognitive difficulties and seizures.
'Until this point, they hadn't told us the results of the biopsy as it was near Christmas,' said Abbie, who described it as 'all a blur'.
At this stage the biopsy hadn't been able to determine what grade the tumour was—which indicates how quickly the cancer might grow and spread.
This was when his girlfriend was told his 12 months prognosis, but the family decided not tell Kieran until after Christmas in January 2023, when he was back home.
'When I was diagnosed with the brain tumour, I was scared, angry and always questioned why,' Kieran said.
He was told he needed 30 sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy by an oncologist at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool on January 5, 2023.
In a glimmer of hope, an MRI and CT scan showed the tumour was shrinking when the gruelling treatments ended in February that year.
However just five months later, he was told it had stopped working and the tumour was growing again.
To try and stop the growth, they put him on another dose of chemotherapy called lomustine, and initially the tumour started to shrink again.
But sadly, Kieran had to stop treatment because there was evidence of liver damage.
Initially the plan was for him to just have some time off from treatment so the liver could repair itself before six more cycles of a higher dose of chemotherapy.
And Abbie said: 'At every three-monthly scan we attended, we were told that his tumour was shrinking and shrinking.'
The tumour, she explained, which had started at 5.5cm shrunk to 0.35cm at its smallest 'with 19 months of no treatment'.
But heartbreakingly, in his most recent scan in June this year, they were told his tumour had started to grow again.
The couple set up the online fundraising page Kieran's Krew—initially to raise money for brain charities—but it has evolved into much more.
They have raised more than £57,000 for different brain tumour charities including the Brain Tumour Charity.
The funds have also gone towards paying for different therapies at home, such as an oxygen machine and red light—which may help healing and reduce inflammation.
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