The Brain Tumour Charity's Five Year Strategy

I have decided to bite the bullet, throw away my fear of laying out my grief and start writing about losing my beautiful son – undeniably the only event in my life that has ever thrown me out of kilter and made me question everything that I do in life. It’s the death of my child that has done that; the illness, the brain tumour – that was all fightable and I could stay in control… for a while.

The death of Oscar is irreversible. My 9 year old will never hug me again, never laugh, never stubbornly argue with me and never play with his brothers again. He will not meet his new little brother in September and his little brother will never meet him. It will be for us; his mum, his dad and his two brothers; to ensure that Oscar’s memory is kept alive. It is ironic to even utter those words and still incomprehensible – Oscar dying surely is not real, maybe we can turn back time, maybe if I did something different, if we all did it differently, saw it earlier, had other treatments, maybe turned back the clock long enough for it never to happen… ?

This is the reason why I am so passionate about our charity. Sadly Oscar’s story is not unusual – there are so many families out there going through the same fight. While some of these children will survive, their quality of life is so vastly reduced. We set up the charity in Oscar’s name because we want to help find better treatments. This is why we have partnered with The Brain Tumour Charity and in particular why we fully support their HeadSmart campaign.

It is because of our partnership with The Brain Tumour Charity that our Chair, Sharon Reid, and I were invited to the launch of their Five Year Strategy. It is an ambitious strategy which highlights the need for earlier diagnosis and better treatment not only for survival but for a good quality of life after diagnosis and treatment.

To read more about the Strategy please follow this link:
http://www.thebraintumourcharity.org/about-us/defeating-brain-tumours

OSCAR’s PBTC aims to fully support this strategy, feeding into it with our main emphasis as always on children and young adults. We may not change what happened to Oscar, but we will be part of changing the direction of brain tumour treatments for other children.

Marie