Latest news with #doctor
Al Jazeera
3 hours ago
- General
- Al Jazeera
Gaza doctor dies after Israeli bombing killed nine of his children
NewsFeed Gaza doctor dies after Israeli bombing killed nine of his children Gaza Doctor Hamdi al-Najjar has died 8 days after suffering severe injuries in an Israeli strike that killed nine of his 10 children. His death leaves his 11-year-old son as the sole survivor of the attack.
Forbes
3 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
The 4+4 Blueprint: Inside The Hofstra BS/MD Experience
Choosing to become a doctor is more than just selecting a job—it's a lifelong commitment to healing, educating, and positively impacting patients' lives. As anyone who dreams of donning a white coat understands, the journey to become a doctor is long and complex but immensely rewarding in the end. The Hofstra 4+4 Program: BS-BA/MD offers a transformative opportunity for students who have already chosen their path and are eager to dedicate themselves to their medical career from the start. Facilitated by the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, being a student in this program does not prove a shortcut; rather, it delivers a carefully designed and immersive experience that prepares students for the challenges and rewards of being a physician today. The Hofstra 4+4 Program gives students early access to clinical opportunities and a strong support ... More system to help them through the process. The eight-year program emphasizes mentorship as it balances academic challenges with personal development and practical experiences. This program carves the path to transform its matriculants from a high school senior into an empathetic, well-rounded physician ready to make an impact. The Hofstra 4+4 Program: BS-BA/MD consists of four years of undergraduate education followed by four years of medical school training, seamlessly integrated into a single pathway. What distinguishes this program is not only the efficient process but also the underlying philosophy of cultivating outstanding physicians who are technically and empathetically skilled. Graduates emerge as leaders who grasp the humanistic impact of their work in medicine. Entry into this program is highly competitive. Each year, nearly 2,000 driven students from all over the country submit applications, yet only 10 to 15 are offered this coveted position. This results in a 0.5% acceptance rate, making it one of the most competitive routes to medicine available. Here's a rundown of what was required for students applying in 2025/26: In addition to these quantitative prerequisites, competitive applicants must also have enthusiasm, perseverance and a well-defined vision for their medical career ahead. The application process for the Hofstra 4+4 Program: BS-BA/MD consists of multiple steps. It's a comprehensive system to get to know the candidates as personally as individuals and academically. The program's aim is to choose students who are genuinely prepared for this commitment. Here is a general timeline, with the dates and requirements subject to change from year-to-year: This is a challenging process to say the least, but each phase is a checkpoint to guarantee that the program is choosing not only the brightest students but also the most dedicated to the core values of medicine. One of the most compelling features of the Hofstra 4+4 Program: BS-BA/MD is the level of flexibility it offers. Unlike students in traditional pre-med programs who feel restricted in the classes outside of the core sciences they are required to take, students in this program are encouraged to pursue outside interests. With 165 majors available, students can choose whatever sparks their interest, whether it's biology, psychology, economics or even dance. Previous students have used this flexibility to explore areas they never thought they would take a class in, let alone major in. This program facilitates this freedom of academic discovery while also making sure students fulfill all the medical school requirements. However, the benefits don't end there. The program encourages students to: These initiatives all go beyond academics; they focus on developing well-rounded individuals who can contribute their distinct thoughts and experiences to the medical field. Taking on the requirements of the BS/MD program may seem daunting at first, but the students in this program are never alone in the process. From the first day on campus, students are assigned a compatible medical school advisor to navigate coursework, research opportunities and extracurricular activities. The advisors will also provide guidance on MCAT preparation and medical school readiness. Beyond providing logistical support, the advisor will also serve as a support system throughout the med school journey as they help find opportunities that align with the student's individual passions and goals. Additionally, the community of peers will provide invaluable support. Upperclassmen often mentor under students, offering tips and establishing an open support network. The program organizes group bonding activities, such as bowling and ice skating, where participants can unwind and make lifelong friendships. Another major benefit of the Hofstra 4+4 Program: BS-BA/MD is its affiliation with Northwell Health, one of the largest healthcare providers in New York. This paves the way for a plethora of opportunities, including research at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and clinical experiences at Northwell's hospitals and outpatient centers. With early exposure to shadowing and research opportunities, it gives its students an advantage by allowing them to be present and work in the setting they will become so familiar with later in their career. After the students matriculate to the Zucker School of Medicine, they will immerse themselves in the unique, case-oriented curriculum that combines scientific knowledge with clinical application. Students will engage in experiential learning via small-group discussions, training in procedures like ultrasound and participate in clinical rotations. To remain in the program and have a smooth transition into medical school, students must uphold certain standards, which might change from year-to-year: It's a high standard to reach, but these expectations ensure students are ready for the rigors of medical school. The Hofstra 4+4 Program: BS-BA/MD focuses on education, but it also prioritizes developing compassionate and cultured humans. Students will have the opportunity to engage in extracurricular activities like sports, community service and study abroad. These experiences will foster students' emotional and ethical development, preparing them to be the best doctor they can for their future patients. Many students talk about how the most fulfilling part of the program is the balance built into the curriculum, with challenging academic courses combined with the opportunity to have an enriching college experience. If you are ready to dedicate yourself to a career in medicine, the Hofstra 4+4 Program: BS-BA/MD provides a direct and rewarding journey. It integrates the stability of a secured medical school position with the freedom to develop and pursue your passions and gain the skills essential for success as a doctor.
The Guardian
8 hours ago
- General
- The Guardian
I found myself Googling: can brain cancer cause hiccups? How I fell into a hypochondriac rabbit hole
Throughout my adolescence and into my mid-20s, I spent a lot of time trying to understand my body. I was unwell, that much was certain. The question of exactly what was wrong with me was one to which I applied myself studiously. I had theories, of course. Looking back, these tended to change quite frequently, and yet the fear was always the same: in short, that I was dying, that I had some dreadful and no doubt painful disease that, for all my worrying, I had carelessly allowed to reach the point at which it had become incurable. This started at university, when I developed a headache that didn't go away. The pain wasn't severe, but it was constant – accompanied by a strange feeling of belatedness that told me it had already been going on for some time. How long, exactly, I couldn't say – weeks, definitely. Maybe it had been years. After about a month, I visited the doctor. She had an earnest, warbling, confident way of speaking, which, in spite of her evident commitment to the tenets of mainstream medicine, gave her the air of an alternative healer. She explained that what I was experiencing were tension headaches, a common ailment among students, and during exam season practically universal. I said that I didn't feel very tense. The doctor asked whether the pain felt like a tightness across both sides of the head. A kind of squeezing? Like an elastic band being pulled tight? Like a fist clenching around your skull? I said that it did not feel like these things. Yes, she said, nodding meaningfully. Every person experiences tension differently. The doctor asked me what medication I'd been using to manage the pain. I was thrown by this question; the thought had not occurred to me. This was, in many ways, quite surprising, since I consider my tolerance of pain to be less developed than the average. In the case of this headache, however, my attitude was edging closer to that of Franz Kafka. A century earlier, the writer told his fiancee, Felice Bauer, that he never took aspirin because doing so, he said, created 'a sense of artificiality' far worse than any 'natural affliction'. As Kafka explained to Bauer, if you had a headache, you had to undergo the experience of pain and treat it as a sign, before examining your entire life, right down to its most minute detail, 'so as to understand where the origins of your headaches are hidden'. The idea of taking painkillers struck me as irresponsible, even reckless, like disconnecting the fire alarm because it has interrupted your sleep. Like Kafka, I wanted to understand the headache. I wanted to know what it meant. The doctor told me to come back in a few weeks if things hadn't got better, sooner if they got worse. I left the practice holding a bottle of aspirin, which I promptly deposited in the bin. In the months that followed, I began using Google to research what was wrong with me. The thinking here was not unreasonable: I wanted to know what was causing the headache, so it made sense to go searching for information. The problem was that these online searches often produce a sense of disproportion: the list of 10 things that cause headaches might fail to mention that certain items account for the vast majority of cases, while others vanishingly few. And for those of us looking for trouble, our eyes tend to pass over the more prosaic – and plausible – explanations (eyestrain, dehydration or indeed tension). Only the worst will satisfy us. As the critic and Nobel laureate Elias Canetti once wrote, hypochondria is a form of angst that 'seeks names and finds them'. Predictably, I arrived at the conclusion that I had a brain tumour – an interpretation for which my Googling provided abundant evidence. As I trawled through lists of symptoms, more and more aspects of experience came to fall under my conscious scrutiny. Soon I was noticing lots of other little anomalies. I became forgetful; words kept escaping me. At the same time, I seemed to be walking around in a continual state of deja vu. I developed a twitch in my left eye. One pupil became slightly larger than the other, and coffee started tasting weird and metallic. I developed a mild but persistent case of the hiccups; just one, two, maybe three solitary little hiccups each day. 'Can hiccups be caused by brain cancer?' I asked Google. Yes, it answered – if it is advanced. Sometime later I started to smell things that didn't seem to have any external source. Burning, usually. Other times an astringent, chemical smell. One morning I woke up and my nostrils were filled with the indescribable scent of the villa in Spain where as a child I spent my long, dull, lovely summers. My eyesight, which had always been perfect, began to flare at the edges, as though there were always something flickering just outside my field of vision. I would turn suddenly, trying to catch it, at which point it would cease, recommencing as soon as I turned back around. I started keeping a list of all these things as they arose, on a loose sheet of paper headed 'symptoms'. Reading back over that list, it seemed to resemble the descriptions of illnesses that I browsed online. The doctor, however, took a different view – and the greater my fear that I was seriously unwell, the more she became convinced that my headache was being caused by 'tension'. In her recent book The Invisible Kingdom, Meghan O'Rourke writes about suffering from an undiagnosed autoimmune illness, an experience she describes as 'living at the edge of medical knowledge'. She writes: 'What really terrified me was the conviction that … I would never have partners in my search for answers – and treatments. How could I get better if no one thought I was sick?' O'Rourke is pointing out that diagnosis starts with a conversation between a patient and their doctor. There are important questions here about privilege: about who is and isn't deemed to be a reliable narrator of their own experience. Studies have shown that women are less likely to be believed by their doctors than men, and black women are less likely to be believed than white women. But, for everyone, conversations with the doctor are constrained by the need to appear credible – and if you are hoping to get a referral for medical testing, this might mean being careful to avoid seeming too anxious. In a desire to economise on my trips to the doctor, I would sometimes seek alternative paths to diagnosis. On several occasions, I visited the optician, because I knew they would use an ophthalmoscope to examine my optic nerve, which, I had learned online, might be inflamed due to the increased pressure inside my skull if I did have a tumour. (In the end, this did result in a diagnosis – one that, come to think of it, was rather apt: myopia.) On the occasions when I did visit the doctor, I was always very careful to limit what I said, not wishing to appear like one of those 'knowledgable' patients, a hypochondriac, who turns up requesting a second opinion on a diagnosis that they themselves have made. 'The position of hypochondria is still suspended in darkness,' declared Sigmund Freud in 1909. His colleagues wanted to make a publication celebrating the achievements of their new science, but Freud was cool, arguing they would have to be honest about what he called 'the limits of our knowledge'. For millennia, hypochondria has confounded patients and doctors alike. It first appears in the writings of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and then in those of the Roman physician Galen. According to these accounts, hypochondria was a subspecies of melancholy, which was caused by an excess of one of the four humours, black bile. This meant it was a physical disease, seated in the abdomen, though it could cause an array of mental symptoms such as fear and sorrow. This view remained more or less unchallenged for many centuries. Then, in the 18th century – with the waning authority of humoral medicine – hypochondria was redescribed as a nervous illness with a set of symptoms that spanned mind and body. It was often considered to be a peculiarly male disease: a counterpart to the hysteria that was said to affect women. Having long been considered a 'scholar's disease', it became a fashionable ailment among an urban literati, with eminent sufferers including Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. During this period, several books such as Samuel-Auguste Tissot's An Essay on Diseases Incidental to Literary and Sedentary Persons (1768) warned of the consequences of reckless and excessive reading. This trend accelerated in the 19th century with the emergence of a genre of popular medical manuals. A Victorian physician was expressing the view of his profession when he decried the spread of 'pernicious books of 'popular medicine'', adding that there is 'no doubt that the reading of this kind of literature has often resulted in an attack of hypochondriasis'. As more and more people were reading about health and sickness, hypochondria settled into its current meaning: a fear of illness that is also a form of illness. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion By the time I came to worry about my health, attention had been turned towards the internet, with some doctors speaking about the rise of a worrying new scourge: 'cyberchondria'. And for anyone who fears they may be suffering from this disorder, Dr Google promises to step in to help: '5 Ways to Tell If You Have Cyberchondria' (Psychology Today); '15 Signs You're a Cyberchondriac' (Yahoo). (One sign is 'you assume that the first result is the most plausible explanation'; another is 'you trust the internet more than your doctor'.) At the heart of hypochondria is the fact that it's impossible to really know what's going on inside your body. A person can 'feel well … but he can never know that he is healthy', Immanuel Kant wrote in 1798. Today, medical websites, with their lists of the seemingly innocuous 'warning signs' of serious illness, have grown into multimillion-dollar businesses by publicising this potential gap between reality and perception – between how well you might feel, and how sick you might be. More than a year after the headache started, I was referred to a neurologist. The referral was made reluctantly, with a mixture of sympathy and contempt. The neurologist sent me for an MRI. A few weeks later a letter arrived. In its entirety, it read: 'Dear Mr Rees, your brain is reported as normal.' Over time the other symptoms started to disappear. But that was not the end of things. Up late one night, I found myself looking into error rates within radiology. Across all areas, it's about 3-5%. This was not that bad, I thought. Then I Googled the number of annual radiology scans in the UK; that year it was about 40m. If 4% of those were wrong, this amounted to 1.6m incorrect scans – a number, I reasoned, that was certainly large enough to include me. In a study of those diagnosed with a lung carcinoma, the lesion could retrospectively be found in 90% of 'negative' scans. After a brief, ecstatic period of reprieve, my fears came back. At some point I forgot my headaches and directed my attention towards the lymph nodes in my neck, which I nervously fingered as though they were rosary beads. Once again, I was sure there was something seriously wrong with me – and, as I sought to get to the bottom of things, I found myself trapped in the same cycle of recovery and relapse. If hypochondria is a need to know, then no test is likely to offer a definitive cure. Ultimately, one has to learn to make peace with uncertainty. Perhaps this is what Freud meant when he said that hypochondria exposes the limits of our knowledge. Not simply a gap that could be filled with new information, but a more categorical deficiency: the failure of knowledge to ever bring about the states of health and happiness or even certainty we desire. I'm not really sure how I came to stop worrying so much about my health. After nearly a decade of anxiety, in my mid-20s I simply ceased to give it much thought. It is probably fair to say I've overcorrected. A couple of years ago, when I woke up in a state of extreme allergic response (shortness of breath, dizziness, eyes swollen shut), I took a hay fever tablet and tried go to work. Luckily, my partner convinced me to go to A&E, where I was immediately given a shot of steroids. The poet Anne Boyer has written about what she calls 'reverse hypochondria', and I suppose I have joined these ranks. I think writing about hypochondria helped. Reading about the fears of others – writers such as Kafka, Marcel Proust with his extreme sensitivity, and Alice James with her wavering and debilitating symptoms – was strangely comforting and helped to keep my own fears under control. Besides, researching and writing a book is a sort of apprenticeship in uncertainty: finishing it required me to give up my fantasies of fully understanding the topic. The NHS's standard treatment for health anxiety consists of cognitive behavioural therapy. Some people report being helped by CBT, but it's never really interested me. By the time I started psychoanalysis at the age of 30, my fears had been more or less put to rest. But I think it would have been helpful back at the height of my hypochondria. One thing I enjoy about conversations with my analyst is how they generally make me less certain about my version of events – the way they loosen me, in an undramatic and indefinitive way, from my attachment to my own narratives. And so I can't help but feel this would have been good then, back when I only had one story to tell: the story of my illness. Hypochondria by Will Rees is out now, published by Coach House Books at £12.99. To order a copy, go to Delivery charges may apply.
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
For Mark Cuban, A Healthy Healthcare System Means Doctors Have Time For Golf On Wednesdays Like They Used To. Here's Why
Mark Cuban isn't a doctor, but he may be one of the most outspoken advocates for fixing America's broken healthcare system. In a recent episode of the 'How I Doctor' podcast hosted by Dr. Graham Walker, Cuban laid out what he believes is fundamentally wrong with U.S. healthcare—and what we can do about it. 'Healthcare is really a simple business,' Cuban said. 'You go to the doctor, hopefully the doctor says nothing's wrong. If there's a complication or some need, the doctor tells you what you need... There's really only two questions: What's it going to cost and how are you going to pay for it? That's it.' He calls it a 'two-questioned industry.' Don't Miss: Deloitte's fastest-growing software company partners with Amazon, Walmart & Target – Hasbro, MGM, and Skechers trust this AI marketing firm — But instead of staying that simple, the system has become a web of complications. 'Every complication you add is an opportunity for arbitrage,' he said. In other words, more complexity results in more people taking a slice of the money flowing through the system. And doctors? They're stuck dealing with the mess. 'Let me just tell you upfront, doctors are underpaid,' he said. 'I want that motherf***er doctor to make $10,000,' Cuban said about heart surgeons getting paid a fraction of what hospitals bill for transplants. 'So he's paying attention or she's paying attention and not worried about getting to the next heart transplant or worried about the patient that's got a boo-boo.' Trending: Cuban was brutally honest when it came to insurance companies: 'The insurance companies are the worst of the worst of the worst, of the worst of the worst.' He explained that insurers design plans with deductibles and out-of-pocket costs that make healthcare unaffordable for people who need it most. Yet doctors are the ones left holding the financial risk. 'Even if they're broke as a joke and don't have two nickels to rub together, you have to still care for them,' he said. That debt becomes the doctor's problem, not the insurance company's. If all the pricing were transparent, doctors would be able to just take care of their patients, take notes, and put them in the electronic medical record. He added that there would be nothing else for them to do, 'because that's what this whole conversation is about, how can we get doctors to be able to golf on Wednesdays like they used to?' Cuban referenced a time when doctors could practice medicine without being buried in billing Cuban, one fix is simple: increase the supply of doctors. He suggested making medical school free to attract the best candidates regardless of financial background. Cuban estimated the total cost of doing this would be around $24 billion over four years, based on roughly 10,000 students annually and $60,000 per student per year. 'So you truly get the best of the best as opposed to the best of the people who can either afford it or are willing to take on the debt.' Looking ahead, Cuban said doctors need to embrace AI, not fear it. 'Learn everything you can about AI, period. End of story,' he said. He believes AI tools will soon be as normal in healthcare as phones and emails. Doctors who learn to integrate them will be better equipped to help more patients, more efficiently. Cuban wrapped the interview by expressing gratitude. 'Thank you for all the blood, sweat and tears you put in to keep us healthy, to keep us alive,' he said. 'I know how hard it is. I can't imagine the stress it creates.' Read Next: 'Scrolling To UBI' — Deloitte's #1 fastest-growing software company allows users to earn money on their phones. UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article For Mark Cuban, A Healthy Healthcare System Means Doctors Have Time For Golf On Wednesdays Like They Used To. Here's Why originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Sign in to access your portfolio
Telegraph
a day ago
- Health
- Telegraph
At 20 I was told I had a brain tumour. A clinical trial changed everything
Of all the things I thought might happen when I went off to university, being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness wasn't one of them. You don't consider the prospect of getting seriously ill when you're a healthy man in your early 20s. It's something that happens to other people, ones that you'll never meet, who surely aren't much like you at all. But there I was in the doctor's office in 2019, aged 20, being told that I had a brain tumour. To be precise, it was a grade one pilocytic astrocytoma, a slow-growing lump the size of a walnut where my head meets my spine. I'd never heard of it before, despite the fact that young adults like me are more likely to get a tumour of this sort than any other. Just the sound of it, the long, complicated medical term that made everything 10 times scarier, was more serious than anything I was equipped to deal with at that age. When the news came, my mum stared at me, clearly in shock and looking for anything to say that would make it better. My dad burst into tears. I had never seen him sob like that before. I coped with humour. 'Well, isn't that a shocker?' I said to the doctor. I took a photo that I thought was funny and sent it to all of my friends, with the caption: 'Guess who has a brain tumour'. It was only when I got home the following night that the bad news sunk in. Alone in my room, with no one to put on a brave face for, I cried and cried for hours, thinking that my life was completely over. I took another photo, knowing that it would be my lowest moment. I didn't show that to anyone. I'd always been fit and healthy. I was into skiing and snowboarding, but what I really loved was football. I was well-liked at university, making a huge group of friends that I'd play friendlies and go on nights out with. But then I started to get this strange 'fuzzy' feeling, first in my arm and then in my lower body. It took more effort to kick a ball about, as if my leg had become too heavy to lift. I studied product design at Nottingham Trent, so I was working with my hands most of the time, and a few weeks after that, I found that I was struggling to move my fingers, too. At the time I was training for a marathon with some of my sporty friends, doing long runs multiple times a week, so I put it all down to fatigue. Then one day, as I was working, my hands started to shake uncontrollably. I phoned my mum straight away, and that's when she told me that I should go to the doctor, just to check that everything was fine. At my initial appointment I was actually told that I 'definitely have multiple sclerosis'. I went to my brother's birthday party straight afterwards, and my mum said that that couldn't be right, and that I should get a scan to see what the problem really was. It was a relief: she's always right when it comes to health issues, and most people who have MS aren't diagnosed until their 30s. That's how I ended up in the doctor's office receiving my diagnosis, after a brain scan. The tumour in my head had been growing for years, and it was just starting to reveal itself, leaking fluid and pushing on the nerves that send signals to my arms and legs and causing the 'fuzziness' I felt. Survival rates for this kind of tumour are high, at over 90 per cent, but that statistic hides just how debilitating it is to have a massive growth in your head. So does the fact that tumours like mine are 'benign', or non-cancerous. It wasn't necessarily good news. This only means that chemotherapy doesn't work, 'so we have to operate,' said the doctor. It would be a major surgery that required weeks of recovery, but that was meant to be fairly low-risk. This is where my problems really started. A week after my diagnosis, I was introduced to the oncology team (who deal with benign tumours too) at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, and the following month I had my operation. It was a planned two-hour surgery to remove the fluid that had leaked out, and then the tumour itself. When the doctors went to tackle the growth, though, my brain collapsed in on itself and I suffered a major stroke. When I woke up, I couldn't walk. I had lost most of my ability to speak, too. All I could say was 'yes' and 'go away'. I'd been told by my surgeons that this could happen, but that the risk was 'less than 1 per cent'. Again, I thought that the unlucky person in every hundred would be someone else, and I'd soon be able to go back to my normal life. So I was unlucky twice, and left with little chance of ever walking or speaking normally again. It took a lot of rehab, speech therapy, and proton beam therapy (a kind of radiotherapy to incinerate and shrink the tumour since it can't be removed) for me to get back on my feet. I can speak normally now, but I still don't have movement in my right hand, and my right leg lags behind me when I walk. So much for football. My life was far from normal. I was left with headaches and a massive amount of fatigue, but worst of all were my seizures. I had seven in as many months, and when each came, I was convinced that I was dying. I saw flashes of light, colours and patterns. Thankfully my mum is a nurse, and my sister is a paramedic, so there was always help to hand. I remember once coming around and seeing my mum and three of her friends – all nurses – standing over me. It was July 2020, and they'd been on a WhatsApp call when my seizure started. We live in a tiny village, so they all rushed over to help. Outside there were three ambulances and a paramedic car. It made me feel so ill and so helpless. I was pretty much resigned to being ill forever. I was already on anti-seizure medication, and yet they kept coming. But my mum didn't give up hope: she and my oncologist, Dr Helen Benghiat, searched dozens of websites for clinical trials, and finally Dr Benghiat found a trial that I might have been eligible for in the United States, via the Sarah Cannon Research Institute UK (part of HCA Healthcare UK), for a new drug that could potentially shrink brain tumours. I haven't had a seizure since starting the trial in 2021, and my tumour has shrunk slightly. It certainly isn't growing, which means that I can get on with my recovery in a way that I couldn't before. Being on a clinical trial changed my life in other ways, too. It gave me the chance to feel that I was making a real difference when my life had changed hugely, and I didn't know what the future would hold. I was surrounded by people on other trials for different types of cancers and there was a sense that we were all in it together. It also meant that I had access to regular check-ups and brain scans to monitor my progress, something I wouldn't have had on the NHS. The reassurance that all is going well has allowed me to move on in a way I never could have otherwise. At 26, I still live at home with my parents, which isn't how I thought my life would be. I'm making progress, but I'm not the popular, care-free young man I was. One of the hardest and most shocking things about becoming seriously ill was seeing my friends disappear. I was well and truly 'ghosted': people I thought I was close with, and would have stuck with through anything, vanished completely. I imagine they just didn't want to think about the dark side of life that what happened to me had thrown up. On the other hand, I've had support from places I never would have imagined. I started doing coffee mornings for The Brain Tumour Charity, which some of my old friends from school turned out to. One of those people was my girlfriend, Lucy. Six months ago she messaged me on Facebook asking for the details to come along. At the event itself, we clicked instantly, and we've been together ever since. It's hard to picture the future when you have a serious illness. Not long ago, I thought I'd never get married or have kids – why burden someone else with a problem like this? But Lucy has changed all of that for me. I keep telling her that I won't blame her if this all becomes too much and she needs to leave, but she keeps telling me that she wants to be with me and to help me as I recover. I'm back at work, with a part-time job managing mobile phone contracts for the NHS. Everyone I work with is incredibly understanding, giving me time off for appointments and fatigue when I just can't make it in. I finished my product design degree in three years despite my brain tumour. As part of my coursework I made a discreet seizure protection hat. At the time I was being told that I needed to wear a seizure helmet in case I hurt myself, but they're just so ugly and obvious. I couldn't imagine myself wearing one on a night out, and I knew lots of other people my age must have felt the same. I'd love to roll the cap out to other people. I wear it myself for now, just in case my seizures come back. Now I'm a young ambassador for The Brain Tumour Charity. There were 21 of us in total when I joined, but now there are just 18. It's something that I do feel guilty about. As the first person in Britain to join the clinical trial that has let me lead a close-to-normal life, there's a cloud hanging over me, the sense that I was lucky when others weren't. That really hit home at the funeral for one of my best friends Harry Thompson, another ambassador, who died at the end of November last year. He was only 23.
