Life was looking good for 23-year-old Cal Petrie until an intense week-long headache led to him having a CT scan. A buildup of fluid was discovered on his brain which he needed surgery for. After the procedure, a biopsy revealed he had a pineoblastoma, a rare brain tumour which is more commonly diagnosed in children. Cal underwent surgery to remove the tumour. He has finished having proton beam therapy, which uses high-energy beams of protons to precisely target and destroy cancer cells, and is now having chemotherapy. Cal’s mum, Lucy Scott-Petrie, is cycling the London to Brighton bike ride to raise vital funds for Brain Tumour Research.
Here, Cal tells his story…
2025 was a tremendous year. I had moved from home in Farnham, Surrey, into London with my identical twin brother Brodie and my best mate, I was in the best physical shape of my life and I was just about to start a business course.
Over Christmas, I'd have one beer but three or four hours later I would start to get a headache. I thought I must be getting old when hangovers come so soon after a beer. After taking an ibuprofen, I would be okay.
In January 2026, I was on holiday with my family in Kenya. I had dived into a swimming pool but I came out clutching my head as I suddenly had a headache.
I thought it was because of dehydration, but when we returned home to England the headache wouldn’t go, even though I was drinking loads of water and sleeping well.
The same headache lasted for seven days.
After Kenya, I was starting a six-month business course where I'd be meeting new people and learning new skills, so I didn't have time to think about the headache. I would take some strong painkillers and would feel fine for the rest of the day.
One night, I went out for drinks with the other students. After closing time at the pub, the group decided to continue somewhere else. Before I went with them, I dropped my bag off at home as it was full of important stuff.
I got myself something to snack on and sat down on the sofa.
All of a sudden, this wave of the most intense pain I've ever experienced hit my head.
It lasted throughout the entire night. I couldn't even go upstairs to my bedroom because any sort of movement made the pain much worse, so I ended up sleeping on the sofa that night.
The next morning, I knew what had happened wasn’t normal, so my mum came around and drove me to A&E at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
A nurse said the pain could have been because of a migraine, but she was concerned that it had lasted so long so she got a second opinion.
I had a CT scan which showed a huge buildup of fluid on my brain which was causing the headaches. I was told I’d need to have surgery a few days later.
The surgery to remove the fluid buildup was considered to be a success. They took a sample for a biopsy to see what might have caused it. The consultant thought there was likely a non-cancerous tumour in there; his team would have a meeting around three weeks' later, with the plan to do surgery whenever they deemed necessary.
Otherwise, I was discharged from hospital and told I could live my normal life and go back to the business course that I’d missed a couple days of.
Two days after leaving hospital, on 19th January, I received a call from the receptionist at the hospital telling me I was booked in for surgery in three days’ time.
The consultant said the tumour was more aggressive than they thought, and that it was in fact cancer.
He told me I had a Grade 4 pineoblastoma which is very uncommon in adults and more often found in babies and infants.
He said: "Look, the business course is wonderful, but your absolute priority right now is getting better, to do the surgery, to recover, to go through the treatments”. That was the moment I knew it was going to alter my life in some sort of way for an indefinite period.
The news turned my whole world upside down. I had just embarked on an exciting new adventure.
For that to all be ripped away from me so quickly was devastating.
I started to ask myself, ‘why me?’ and ‘why now?’. The rug being pulled from beneath me felt like I was in freefall.
I felt angry with the situation because it just felt so unfair although, in my head, I knew there was no-one to be angry with. I was just really unlucky.
There was no apparent reason why this was happening and there was no scapegoat. None of it made sense.
I couldn’t divert my anger and frustration anywhere, so I internalised a lot of it because I didn't want my family or friends to see me like that. My brain was running at a million miles an hour, trying to understand what was going on.
There's a scene from Breaking Bad when Walter White gets diagnosed with lung cancer, and in that scene he is focusing on a stain on the doctor’s shirt. What he’s been told is so enormous that he latches onto something trivial. That need to distract yourself was definitely true for me.
I was most worried about how my family were taking it because, for them, they had no control over the situation. If they could click a red button to stop this from happening, they would click it in a heartbeat.
I absolutely love my family to bits, and I was trying really hard to reassure them.
I’d heard about all the risks associated with having surgery, such as that I would have to relearn how to walk. It made me very worried.
Fortunately, the surgery was a success. They were planning to take out about 60% of the tumour, and they walked away having taken 98%. What better news can you ever receive?
When I came to after surgery, I thought I had lost half my vision but the doctors said there wasn’t any nerve damage and were hopeful it would fully recover.
Losing my vision would be the most devastating thing for me personally.
For the first few weeks at home I couldn't really go on my phone or on a computer. When I watched TV with the family my eyes were straining to see because they weren't working properly. Thankfully, my sight did slowly start to return and made a 99% recovery. There's a tiny blind spot in my peripheral vision, but my brain sort of fills that in for most of the time, so I don't notice it.
Six-weeks after being discharged from hospital I started proton beam therapy at University College London Hospital (UCLH).
It was like walking onto a set of Star Trek.
It’s a very precise machine where they're firing protons inside your head, but they've only got about a millimetre of uncertainty. So, you have to be in the same position for six weeks, five days a week. It's so precise that it's built underground, below the northern line, so the machine doesn't shake.
The first two weeks of treatment was fine but I started to feel extremely tired and a bit nauseous.
I also lost my hair. I knew that would happen, but you never come to terms with it until it actually starts happening, because it's such a physical change. It’s like your identity is washing off you.
Both of my brothers, Brodie and Angus, shaved their heads in solidarity with me which was really sweet.
Since finishing the proton beam therapy, I’ve had a couple of MRI scans since which have been stable, and I'm now halfway through chemotherapy.
I am more physically active, playing tennis, padel and going to the gym so I am reclaiming that bit of my life back, which makes me feel more normal.
When I look back to January when I was bound to a hospital bed to where I am now, the progress I've made has been huge.
The doctors have said that I’m such a rare case because pineobastoma is usually only found in babies and infants, so they've taken quite an interest in me.
They will continue doing regular MRI checkups because they want to find out more about why this has happened. My case is being looked at by dozens of doctors trying to figure out why this happened, so it doesn't happen again.
My twin brother Brodie was worried he was at risk because he's got the exact same DNA as me. He had an MRI scan which was clear so he is fine. I'll have a constant relationship with the hospital and I'm pretty happy with that as long as they can make sure things are good.
The doctors don’t know if my tumour was really fast-growing or if it’s been there for a long time, resting dormant until I had my headaches.
There are very few answers but Government funding for brain tumours is still so low.
You just want a solution to what's going on. Everybody in this field wants to know why these things are happening. More funding will help answer those questions and will lead to better care and better treatment.
My mum will do the London to Brighton bike ride to raise money for Brain Tumour Research.
It really doesn't surprise me. Mum is such a get up and go type of person. She has swum the Channel five times and has cycled all the way from the top of Scotland down to Land's End.
She really is my hero. The fact she's doing it to raise money to fund research into brain tumours really does speak volumes about her caring nature. She's just the most phenomenal mother, and I can't have asked for anyone better.
Cal Petrie
September 2026
One in three people in the UK knows someone affected by a brain tumour. This disease is indiscriminate; it can affect anyone at any age. What’s more, brain tumours continue to kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer yet, to date, just 1% of the national spend on cancer research has been allocated to this devastating disease since records began in 2002.
Brain Tumour Research is determined to change this.
If you have been inspired by Cal’s story, you may like to make a donation via www.braintumourresearch.org/donate or leave a gift in your will via www.braintumourresearch.org/legacy
Together we will find a cure.
