This week is International Brain Tumour Awareness Week, which is a chance to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of brain tumours as well as the impact they have. And to continue our mission to provide funding for better and kinder treatments for children diagnosed with this terrible disease.

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Despite the success of OSCAR’s October recently, the charity needs your help more than ever before as we look to fund a range of new projects. These include providing support and care to children, their siblings and their families through OSCAR’s Booster Boxes, wellbeing vouchers and a sibling support programme, as well as some other interesting projects still in the pipeline.

 

We also want to draw attention to The Brain Tumour Charity’s ‘Better Safe Than Tumour’ awareness campaign that builds on the great work of ‘HeadSmart’. It provides age-specific symptom checkers that can help people in receiving early diagnosis meaning treatment can start earlier and survival rates can be improved.

Symptoms can be wide-ranging and can include any of the following: headaches that are often worse in the morning; vomiting (usually in the morning) or feeling sick; seizures; feeling very irritated or losing interest in day-to-day things; eye problems, such as abnormal eye movements, blurring or double vision; feeling very tired much more quickly than usual; feeling extremely sleepy (drowsy) for no reason

Brain tumours can also cause problems with balance and walking, weakness down one side of the body, or changes in behaviour. Some of these symptoms are common even without a brain tumour, and this can cause confusion in the early stages.

Please visit headsmart.org.uk for more information, just so you are better informed

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Over 400 new cases of brain tumours are diagnosed in children in the UK every year.

It is the biggest cancer killer in children and adults under 40 and has a five-year survival rate of just 12%. Some paediatric brain tumours have a survival rate of less than 1%. Despite this, treatments have remained almost unchanged since the 1980s.

Just 1% of the UK’s spending on cancer research goes to brain tumour research. Over three-quarter of the research happening is dependent on the funding it receives form charities and trusts. That is the money you are raising – that makes the research possible.

Glioblastoma is the most common and deadly form of brain cancer. Treatment can involve surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible, as well as radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

However almost 100% of glioblastomas return within a year of surgery. Research to understand what makes these tumours grow back, using viable tissue such as is made available at the Leeds Neuro Research Tissue Bank, which we co-fund with Yorkshire’s Brain Tumour Charity, can help target treatment to try to prevent the tumours coming back.

High-grade brain tumours can be deadly and are currently incurable, but less invasive and aggressive low-grade tumours can still be life-changing, leaving patients with lifelong side effects including vision problems, memory loss, mobility issues and fatigue, as well as dramatic personality changes.

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By raising awareness of the symptoms and need for more research, we can help the thousands of patients and their families who are impacted by this devastating illness.

If you want to get involved with OSCAR’s PBTC you can tell people about us, make a donation, do your own fundraising, join one of our fundraising events or follow @oscarscharity on social media and share our posts.

You can also become more informed about brain tumour signs and symptoms and learn how to help people know what support is out there from us or many of the other wonderful charities in the brain tumour community.

As our founder, Marie Hughes, who lost her husband and two young sons to brain tumours said about her motivation for supporting the charity, “There’s the realisation that things can happen in life to yourself or your own family, so you want to make it better for others.”

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Please help us make it better for others, however you get involved.