Jane Hilton, 55, from Devon, dedicated her life to helping others. An Emergency Nurse Practitioner and long-standing volunteer with the Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team Tavistock, Jane spent more than two decades responding to emergencies and supporting people in their most vulnerable moments. But in December 2023, Jane’s life changed dramatically when she was diagnosed with the aggressive brain tumour glioblastoma.
Here is Jane’s story as told by her partner Russ…
Jane had been experiencing neuralgia for some time and was taking medication to manage the pain. Looking back, there were small changes that we now recognise as early warning signs. Jane started having trouble with her memory and processing things properly, but because of the medication she was on, those symptoms were listed as potential side effects. At the time, it didn’t raise alarm bells for us.
Then, one day in December 2023, everything changed.
Jane was driving to work along a narrow country lane, the kind where there’s only really room for one vehicle at a time and you often have to pull over for oncoming traffic. She veered slightly off the road onto the grass verge. That sort of thing happens all the time on those lanes, so again, it didn’t seem unusual.
Later that day, Jane developed a severe headache and started vomiting while she was at work, as a nurse practitioner in the emergency department of Derriford Hospital.
Because of the way she presented, the doctors weren’t completely happy with what they were seeing. They gave her something for the pain and decided to run a CT scan just to be safe.
At the time I was starting a night shift as a paramedic. I received a call saying Jane was being treated in resuscitation. As we were both used to dealing with medical emergencies as part of our jobs, I wasn’t overly alarmed at first. I had spoken to her and she sounded fine.
But when I arrived and went into the cubicle where she was being treated, a doctor came back with the results of the CT scan.
They told us Jane had a mass in her brain. We were both shocked.
The scan showed quite a large mass, which explained why she had become so unwell. At that moment we knew this was serious. Any mass inside the skull is not good news.
Jane was put on steroids while the team worked out exactly what they were dealing with.
Ironically, what had actually happened was that the tumour had bled into itself. The bleeding hadn’t come from Jane’s brain but from the tumour itself, which caused her to lose mobility on her right side and gave the appearance of a stroke.
In a strange way, that bleed actually gave us more time. If the tumour hadn’t bled, we might not have known it was there at all.
Jane underwent surgery the very next day. Fortunately, Derriford is a major trauma centre, so she was in the best possible place.
The surgeons performed a craniotomy, which lasted around six hours. They were able to remove as much of the tumour as they could, but not all of it. They told us straight away that it didn’t look good and that it was likely cancerous. It really took the wind out of our sails.
After the surgery Jane had some significant memory issues. At one point she genuinely didn’t know whether it was Christmas or Easter. Gradually though, her memory started to return.
When we went back to speak with the surgeon, he told us the diagnosis: incurable glioblastoma.
Jane didn’t fully take it in at the time. She started treatment to reduce swelling in her brain, with radiotherapy first and then chemotherapy. Remarkably, she handled the treatment incredibly well. Aside from nausea and fatigue, she didn’t have many side effects.
Jane was a fit, determined and resilient person, and she approached the illness in exactly the same way she approached everything else in life.
Her mindset was simple: keep going and do as much as possible for as long as possible.
She had MRI scans every three months. The oncologist would review them and adjust her medication depending on what was happening with the swelling in her brain.
But eventually the tumour started to grow again and Jane began another round of chemotherapy.
Over time, her mobility started to deteriorate, and she began to fall more often. Her cognition was also affected. Some days she was fine, other days she struggled to process things or remember them.
Her writing became particularly difficult. Eventually, it got to the point where you couldn’t understand what she had written. So Jane did something remarkable. She taught herself to write with her left hand.
That was Jane in a nutshell, if something became difficult, she simply found another way.
In January 2025, just over a year after her first surgery, Jane had a second craniotomy to remove the regrowth. The surgeons removed more of the tumour and we went through the whole treatment process again.
Eventually, the oncologists started intravenous chemotherapy, but sadly, it wasn’t working.
From the beginning we had always known that there was no cure. We knew that a time would come when treatment would stop working, but when that moment finally arrived it still left us feeling empty inside.
Initially, doctors gave Jane 15 to 18 months to live.
As a nurse and a paramedic, we both understood exactly what that meant. But hearing it about someone you love is very different.
Jane stayed at home and I cared for her until she died in November 2025, 23 months after her diagnosis.
We had been together for 18 years and had lived a very full life.
Jane started nursing straight after leaving school and spent her whole career caring for others. Outside of work she was incredibly active. She played the flute and bassoon in a local orchestra and loved endurance sports.
She ran marathons, ultra marathons and mountain marathons. One of her proudest achievements was completing the Spine Race, a six-day endurance race along the entire Pennine Way – roughly 260 miles.
She was a keen walker, and we walked the entire South Coast together. In the summers we travelled to the Alps to do high-altitude hiking and every year we went ski touring.
Jane was also a long-standing member of the Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team Tavistock, volunteering for 20 years to help people in need.
Jane was known for her resilience, determination and kindness. She got along with everyone and always approached life with quiet strength.
Even while living with a brain tumour, she showed the same determination she had shown in every endurance event she ever took on.
If Jane could give advice to someone receiving the same diagnosis, it would be simple: take every day as it comes. Live each day as if it matters – because it does. Do what you can, for as long as you can, and enjoy that time with the people around you.
That’s exactly how Jane lived her life.
Russ Hilton
March 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 Jane’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.
