Interview 05

Age at Interview: 20

Sex: Male

Age at Diagnosis: 17

Background: Student; mother is a teacher. Mother and son were interviewed together. He is single and lives at home.

Brief outline:Diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour (anaplastic germinoma); his treatment consisted of six weeks of radiotherapy to his head, speech therapy, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. In remission.

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His mother explains that the diary she wrote for her son in intensive care was also useful for his brother, who found the illness hard to accept.



I was very glad I wrote the diary and it also came in very handy for 's younger brother who found it very difficult to accept a) the illness and b) the ups and downs, the sort of crisis we were going through, especially as he was 40 miles away living with my sister at the time. He, he felt very detached, part of him wanted to be there, part of him wanted it all to go away because he was only 15 at the time. Yes, so that, at that stage he still wasn't sure what was going on and was sort of more like avoiding it rather than getting too upset. 

The diary was important for [son] as well, because when he began to accept what had happened he came down [cough] to the first hospital and stayed with me for the weekend and he sort of brought his rugby video and his bottle of drink and his rugby magazine and sat in front of the television watching, sort of almost ignoring what [son] was doing, which I think was sleeping most of the time. But after a while he sort of looked over at [son] and put his thumb up and said, “Are you alright, mate?” And [son] actually responded the same way.
Teenage cancer

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