A mother who put her "weird feelings" down to her pregnancy and busy lifestyle was shocked to learn from doctors she in fact had an aggressive brain tumour. Lauren Champion, 31, first realised something was seriously wrong in October 2021, while she was pregnant.
She dismissed her condition at the time, however, believing it was a product of her circumstances. Seamstress Lauren said: "I had weird feelings of confusion, loss of muscle control down my right side, and loss of my peripheral vision in my right eye. I just thought I was tired and slightly stressed from having a busy lifestyle."
Five weeks after giving birth to her baby Otto though, the new mum was still suffering from the same symptoms. A month later she suffered a tonic-clonic seizure and was subsequently taken to hospital - where the true cause was found.
Lauren, from Belper, Derbyshire, said: "At the hospital, I felt back to normal and didn’t remember the seizure. But I had a CT scan which revealed a lesion on my brain. I thought, 'this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me' and that we hadn’t planned for in our lives."
Lauren, who is also mother to Mischa, 10, and Margot, three, underwent brain surgery at the Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC) in Nottingham in December 2021. There, a surgeon was able to remove most of the tumour, but was forced to leave part of it, which was growing around a major blood vessel.
"The operation went really well, and I was discharged the next day," added Lauren. "I was out running two weeks later. Unfortunately, the tumour is a grade three hemangiopericytoma, which is very aggressive."
Lauren, who is married to Pete, 39, is now training for the Derby 10K race to raise money for Brain Tumour Research. She said: "It’s massively changed my life, so I wanted to do something I love for a charity that means so much to me. There is such a lack of research into this devastating disease and more needs to be done to spot the early symptoms."
Matthew Price, Community Development Manager at Brain Tumour Research, said: "We’re really grateful to Lauren for taking on the Derby 10k for us, as it’s only with the support of people like her that we’re able to progress our research into brain tumours and improve the outcome for patients like Lauren who are forced to fight this awful disease."
Visit Lauren’s GoFundMe page if you'd like to donate.
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