A mother who lost her teenage son to a brain tumour is calling on people to help Stop the Devastation.
Shay Patel, pictured below, was just 13 when he died from a brain tumour in September 2020. The eldest of three children, Shay had been diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) 22 months earlier. His desperate family funded treatments abroad having exhausted the options available in the UK.
Now Shay’s mum, Niki O’Dea Patel, is sharing his story as part of our Stop the Devastation campaign to help raise awareness of the shocking statistics surrounding brain tumours.
She said: “We considered ourselves fortunate to be able to access help abroad and are acutely aware that there are so many families who are not able to do this. But the real issue here is that, in this day and age, when you are told your child has cancer you assume there will be something to increase the odds and give you hope. The harsh reality with this tumour is that there are no effective treatments.
“I can’t believe that funding for research into brain tumours continues to be so poor and that GBMs are still quoted as being rare when we have met so many patients, including children, through Shay’s journey, many of whom have since passed. GBM is certainly not rare and there will be no change and no hope without more funding for research. We cannot let another 10 years go by destroying families and taking more and more young children from their parents. We need the general public to take families like ours to their hearts, to get behind this and to make donations in order to help us to increase the national investment.”
Click here to find out more about Stop the Devastation and how you can support the campaign.
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