Thomas Pearce was nine years old when his mum and teacher first noticed symptoms of a shaking hand and laboured speech. Concerned about his health, his parents took him to the GP, where they were told to wait for an appointment. When Thomas began dribbling and experiencing memory loss, his parents took him to Poole Hospital, where he was diagnosed with a brain tumour.
Thomas tragically died on 16 November 2024, just nine months after being diagnosed with a high-grade glioma.
Here is Thomas’s story, as told by his mum, Louise…
In early February 2024, we started noticing tiny changes. Thomas’s speech became slow and laboured. He would take longer to explain things. At first, it just seemed like he was tired or maybe run down.
Then his teacher told us she’d noticed a slight tremor in his hand. She thought he was nervous because he was presenting to his class. I thought it might be a virus. Never, not once, did I think ‘brain tumour’. That didn’t even cross my mind.
I thought a brain tumour meant headaches or being sick, I didn’t know it could start so quietly.
On 12 February, I called our GP. But because it wasn’t deemed urgent, we had to wait. It was the start of half-term, and that’s when everything changed.
Thomas started to forget things, he even forgot it was half-term. What child forgets that? He began to dribble, and when I pointed it out, he didn’t even realise it was happening. He developed double vision, and he forgot how to swim during a lesson. His swimming teacher looked at me, confused, and said, “What’s going on here?”
I called 111, desperate for advice. They said he needed to see a GP, but didn’t flag it as urgent. We ended up at Poole Hospital’s out-of-hours clinic, where we were referred to the paediatrics team.
They did a CT scan and told us there was a "mass" on Thomas’s brain. I didn’t understand what that meant. I didn’t know a mass meant tumour. Even when they showed us the scan, we didn’t know what we were looking at. We were in complete shock.
They kept using medical words we didn’t understand. I just kept thinking: How has this happened to us?
Thomas was transferred to Southampton Hospital for an MRI the next morning. They had to keep scanning him because they couldn't get the images they needed, and each scan brought worse news. They found multiple areas of concern: his frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and even the top of his brainstem. The tumour was deep in the centre of his brain and inoperable. They did say there was one section to the left of his frontal lobe that they would like to perform a biopsy of.
When they told us Thomas’s tumour was inoperable, I was stunned. I thought, ‘Okay, it can’t be removed, but surely there’s treatment that can help.
I still believed there would be something they could do. It never crossed my mind that we might not be able to save him.
A week later, they performed a biopsy at Poole General Hospital and the biopsy was sent to Great Ormand Street in London for extensive testing. Thomas bounced back quickly from the surgery, as if nothing had happened. That gave us a bit of hope. We went home and waited.
Another week later we travelled to Southampton Hopsital for the results. We took our older son Charlie, who was 11, and left the boys outside while we went in to meet with the doctors. The doctor told us that Thomas would need radiotherapy, that they believed Thomas had a high-grade glioma and that he likely had around 12 months to live.
I just couldn’t take it in. I looked at my husband Gary and said, ‘Can we leave?’ because I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think. My baby boy was sitting outside that room, waiting for us, and he had no idea.
I cried silently the entire drive home. It was dark, and the boys didn’t see my tears.
We told the boys that Thomas had a brain tumour. But we couldn’t tell them how serious it was. We wanted them to hold on to normality for as long as possible. We told Josh 23, our eldest, the full story. He spent so much time with Thomas, building LEGO, puzzles, making memories.
Thomas began six weeks of radiotherapy at University College. He handled it incredibly well. We stayed in London for that period, away from the rest of the family, but we made it through.
In June, he returned to school for half-days. It meant everything to him. But he would never make it back to school again for year five in September.
It took eight weeks to receive the final biopsy results. The doctors explained that they had to keep retesting the tissue because they couldn’t identify it, each time, the results showed different mutations. Eventually, they told us it was a diffuse high-grade glioma, but that was all they could confirm.
After the radiotherapy, Thomas began chemotherapy. His first session was awful, he went into anaphylactic shock from a platelet infusion. I’ll never forget the look on his face. He said, ‘I’m going to die.’ He was terrified.
Every session after that, he would look at me and say, ‘Mummy, am I going to be okay?’ And I would always say, ‘Yes, darling, you’ll be fine.’
We made that summer count. We went to theme parks, safari parks, and anything Thomas wanted to do.
In September, we took a Make-A-Wish trip to Port Lympne Safari Park. He was thrilled to see the giraffes, even though he wasn’t steady on his feet and had to use a wheelchair.
Shortly after, he began having difficulty going to the toilet. I called his nurse, who advised pain relief and said she’d schedule a doctor’s visit when we returned. What I didn’t know was that they’d also booked an MRI for us at Poole.
Thomas had another MRI scan at Poole on 12 September and that was when we were faced with the cold hard reality that Thomas was going to die.
Doctors told us that the cancer had spread. It was now down his spine and his brain stem. We were referred back to Southampton. They told us it was time to stop treatment. They said, “It’s not going to be months. It’ll be weeks.”
I sobbed through the entire meeting. I thought we had more time. I still thought they’d say, ‘But we can try this…’ I didn’t want to believe we were out of options. I didn’t want to say goodbye.
We didn’t tell Thomas. We told him he had a lump in his head, and it was making him sick. He never knew he had cancer. We didn’t want him to carry that fear.
Thomas quickly declined. He lost the use of his legs. One morning, he told me, “My legs are being really lazy today.” My heart broke.
His speech became affected. He began asking to speak to people he wouldn't normally ask for and started saying beautiful, thoughtful things, almost as if he knew he was preparing to go.
He told me, ‘You’re in my heart, Mummy.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.’
Thomas was a bright, curious, and endlessly funny little boy with a huge personality. At just nine years old, he amazed everyone with his love of learning, and he could name every country's flag without hesitation. He adored building LEGO. Thomas also had a special love for sea turtles and animals of all kinds. With his striking red hair and infectious sense of humour, he was affectionately known as 'Mini Ed Sheeran' by his friends. Thomas brought laughter, energy, and joy wherever he went.
On 13 November 2024, Thomas fell unconscious. Three days later, on 16 November, Thomas died at home with all of us around him. His brothers, Josh and Charlie. His dad Gary and me.
Nothing prepares you for the grief, loss and total devastation.
I believe, with all my heart, that a brain tumour didn’t kill my child. The lack of funding, research, and treatment options did.
If Thomas had been diagnosed with another type of cancer, he might have had more hope. But brain tumour research gets just 1% of the national cancer funding. That’s not enough.
We need early diagnosis. We need targeted treatment. We need hope. No family should have to sit in a room and be told there’s nothing left to try for their child. Ever.
We are walking in the New Forest Walk of Hope this September to raise money for Brain Tumour Research. 
This walk is for Thomas. For all the children who never got the chance to grow up.
And for the families who still can’t say the word “cancer” out loud, because it hurts too much.
Louise Pearce
September 2025
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 touched by Thomas’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.
