A dad-of-two went to bed ready for his daughter's birthday only to wake to find he didn't know where he worked or even what his date of birth was. Dave Bolton was so unaware of what had happened to him he even tried to kick out the paramedics called to his home.
However once he realised there were vital gaps in his memory was he knew there was something seriously wrong. And after allowing them to take him to hospital he learned he had a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball, reports the Liverpool Echo.
Dave was just 33 when his life changed overnight. He went to bed as normal but awoke just before midnight to find the paramedics in his bedroom. It transpired he had suffered a 15 minute nocturnal seizure.
He said: "I just remember wolfing down a bowl of cereal because I hadn’t eaten properly, knowing I had to get up in the morning and going to bed - and then coming around at about quarter to midnight with paramedics in my room. I’d stopped breathing and it transpired I’d had a 15 minute nocturnal seizure but when I came around I was just groggy so I tried to to kick them out of the house.
"The paramedics were really good, they said 'Dave what do you do for a living?' And I said 'I’m in the police.' They said 'well where do you work?' And I said 'I don’t know.' 'What’s your date of birth?' 'I don’t know' - and suddenly I realised."
Dave had surgery to remove the tumour at the Walton Centre and had to take medical retirement from his job as a detective sergeant for Merseyside Police. But the following year later the results of a routine brain scan showed the tumour had not only returned but had become a Glioblastoma Multiforme (GMB). Glioblastoma Multiforme is a fast-growing and aggressive brain tumour with a devastatingly short survival time of just 12-18 months.
Dave, from Greasby, Wirral, was told there was little that could be done to save his life. He was given six to eight months to live with treatment or three months without.
The now 41-year-old said: "I went away with a hard decision to make and slipped into one of the darkest places I've ever been to. I spent about a week, two weeks, just lying on the couch.
"I accepted that I was going to die and I just lay there and waited for it to happen. I just didn't care anymore."
The former world kickboxing champion, said it was his wife Samantha who helped him back in July 2015 and he decided to tackle his brain tumour like a fight. He said: "I just thought if the average is six to eight months there must be people that go before then and there must be people who get up to 18 months.
"I thought you've never been average at anything, so what I did is, I kind of treated it as if it was a fight. I named it Terry my opponent, and when I took on a fight say it was three to four months I'd go into a full on camp lockdown.
"I decided to tackle it 360 degrees, so by diet, exercise, forming good habits of sleep, alternative therapies, supplementation, mindfulness, mediation and then accept the treatments as well, so the gold standard. It was dual radiotherapy and chemotherapy followed by full on chemotherapy."
According to Brain Tumour Research, 25% of glioblastoma patients survive more than one year and 5% of patients survive more than five years. But despite the odds, Dave continues to outlive his terminal diagnosis over seven years later and in January this year doctors told him only small signs of the disease were visible.
He has now become a motivational speaker helping people, charities and businesses and runs a charity called Ahead of the Game Foundation, based in Wallasey, with former Premier League footballer Dominic Matteo. He has shared his story to mark Brain Tumour Awareness Month and highlight the need for more funding for brain tumours, with historically just one per cent of the national spend on cancer research being allocated to brain tumours.
Dave said: "I'm trying to use my own horrific situation to remind people that there is another way, there is another option and there is hope. I’ll never be cured. I have to live everyday knowing it could come back at any second because even though I have, the last scan showed there was no real evidence of disease, I think.
"But what happens is there are still cells in my brain because it’s like a web that goes through your brain, so it just takes the perfect environment, the perfect storm for it to spark but I've sort of decompartmentalised it. I've very positive, I’m a very positive person. I’m grateful for having terminal cancer because I see the world completely different now.
"I used to work in my job 12, 13 hour days, I was never off on time. I was missing my family growing up, I’ve got better relationships with my family members now and I truly believe that what I'm doing now is what I was always meant to be doing. I just love my life and I wouldn’t swap it for anything."
Ahead of the Game Foundation led a 10 mile coastal walk on Saturday March 19 in Wirral as part of Brain Tumour Awareness Month. All money raised will be used by the charity to support more people on its 12-week health and wellbeing cancer rehabilitation programme. To donate to Ahead of the Game Foundation click here.
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