Jeff Stancer

Here is Jeff’s story, as told by his daughter Ellie…

My dad, Jeff, has always been such a true family man, through and through. He ran his own home improvements business for more than 20 years, fitting kitchens, bathrooms, painting and decorating after previously working as a haulage driver. He was also incredibly fit and loved the gym, training three or four times a week religiously. He was a big believer in a healthy lifestyle and was physically very strong.

Dad was just about to start slowing down. He’s about to turn  60, on 11th May, and had planned for this to be the year he reduced his work by about half. He and my mum, Lisa, have a touring caravan and we grew up going on caravan holidays. He wanted to stop fitting kitchens and bathrooms, do a bit more painting and decorating and enjoy more time away. He was even going to fit the kitchen in the house my husband George and I are building as his final kitchen before stepping back.

But then we noticed Dad becoming quieter and more withdrawn, which was completely unlike him.

He was less conversational, less forthcoming with decisions and seemed to distance himself from Mum, which was really strange because they’ve been together since they were 15. He cancelled a caravan holiday in August 2025, which again struck us as odd because he loved going away, walking for miles and taking the dog with them. He also stopped wanting music on in his shed, where he usually always had his surround sound system playing while he worked on his bikes.

We wondered whether it could be seasonal depression because Dad had suffered with that before, but this felt different. He was still going to work and the gym, but something clearly wasn’t right. It wasn’t until after his first seizure that he told us he’d actually been suffering with headaches for about two weeks beforehand.

On 27th September 2025, Dad went to bed as normal, but at 3am Mum woke to find him sitting upright before he suddenly fell head-first down the side of the bed and went into a tonic-clonic seizure which lasted 29 minutes. Mum was absolutely distraught because we had no warning anything like this was coming. By the time I got to the house, the ambulance had already taken him to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn.

When I walked into the bedroom, it looked like a murder scene.

There was blood, urine and faeces everywhere and I felt completely shell-shocked. Straight away I knew this was something serious because Dad had never been someone to make a fuss or complain about anything. My gut instinct immediately told me we were facing something huge.

At hospital, he suffered another tonic-clonic seizure while inside the CT scanner. He had fractured his spine and shoulder in the fall and was in so much pain. At first, he didn’t recognise us and couldn’t speak properly, looking at us almost like we were strangers. The scan showed a dark mass on his brain and an MRI was arranged. Initially, we were told it was a fluid-filled cyst and that his results were being sent to Addenbrooke’s Hospital for further investigation.

When we went to Addenbrooke’s, we were told Dad had a glioblastoma – an aggressive and incurable brain tumour – on the front left lobe of his brain and that it was around the size of a tennis ball. It was a really hard pill to swallow because Dad had always been so fit and active, so my immediate fear was simply how long does he have left? I had heard of brain tumours before but had never personally known anyone with glioblastoma, so naturally you start researching, joining charities and support groups and trying to understand what is likely to happen.

Dad had surgery at Addenbrooke’s on 31st October 2025. He went down just after 8am and was back in recovery five hours later.

Surgeons removed around 80% of Dad's tumour, but the remaining 20% was too deeply embedded and too risky to touch.

When he was diagnosed, we were initially told he may have around 18 months and were advised to go out, make memories and enjoy life, but that is almost impossible when someone is declining every single day.

Dad recovered well from surgery and doctors said his fitness had helped him massively. He then had a six-week gap before starting radiotherapy and temozolomide chemotherapy, travelling to Addenbrooke’s every day for six weeks. He had very few side effects from the chemotherapy apart from losing his hair, but the final week of radiotherapy really took it out of him and left him exhausted, uncomfortable and struggling to sleep.

After treatment, an MRI showed the temozolomide had not worked. We were told his tumour was only 2% responsive to it and that the radiotherapy had also damaged healthy tissue around the tumour. Dad was told the tumour was already growing back.

I’ve rarely seen my dad cry, but he cried when he was first given 18 months to live and again when we were told his prognosis had been reduced to six months.

It was devastating because we had only just started to digest the first prognosis before everything changed all over again.

He has since started lomustine chemotherapy, which doctors said had shown around 40% responsiveness against his tumour, and he is now on his second round. Since February, Dad has suffered several more seizures, one lasting 17 minutes, another 12 minutes and another nine minutes, with every seizure resulting in another hospital admission.

Dad is now wheelchair-bound and struggles to speak, often only able to answer with short words or point to what he wants. That has been one of the hardest things because he was always such a funny, lively character. He has always been an incredibly involved grandad to my children, Harley and Elva-Mae, cheering them on at their go-kart races and spending time riding bikes with them. Now he can’t even get to the track to watch them race.

My mum also had to stop working to become Dad’s full-time carer because he cannot be left alone due to the risk of seizures. Watching him stop breathing during a seizure is terrifying because every time we fear it could be the one that takes him from us.

That’s why I decided to fundraise because there is still no cure for glioblastoma and treatment options have changed very little.

Brain tumours receive such a small amount of cancer research funding and that needs to change. When most people hear someone has cancer, they think there will be chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hopefully remission, but with glioblastoma it feels like you are handed the end of someone’s life on a plate from the very beginning.

That’s why I’m taking on the 200k in May Your Way challenge for Brain Tumour Research. I know my fundraising may only feel like a drop in the ocean, but the more people who raise awareness and fund research, the better chance there is of improving treatments in the future.

I plan to keep fundraising every year for Dad, now in respect of him and eventually in honour of him when he is no longer here. I want to keep doing everything I can to put money back into research and help families like ours.

If I could speak to the Government, I would say brain cancer should be funded fairly, just like every other cancer.

In fact, because it is so devastating and gives people such little time, I believe it should be one of the biggest priorities. I just hope that one day there will be a way to cure this disease rather than simply trying to manage it.

Ellie Merrison
May 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 Jeff’s story, donate via www.braintumourresearch.org/donate or leave a gift in your will via www.braintumourresearch.org/legacy

Together we will find a cure.