A woman who lost her mum to a glioblastoma (GBM) says that the Government “needs to be held accountable” as she urges people to support our petition calling for increased research funding.
Wendy Griffin was diagnosed with a GBM in 2018. She kept her diagnosis to herself to protect her three daughters, Michaela, Laura and Kirstie, until Michaela, who was away at university, noticed her mum’s face was swollen while on a video call.
Sadly, Wendy died in December 2020.
Michaela, who now studies brain tumours in her role as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, said: “I was shocked at how much of Mum we lost so quickly. We lost a lot of her a long time before she died. Her death was long and painful to watch; it wasn’t this one big moment we expected. Brain tumours are so unlike other cancers, you just can’t predict what will happen.”
This GBM Awareness Week, Michaela is sharing her mum’s story to encourage others to sign our petition calling on the Government to ring-fence £110 million of current and new funding to kick-start an increase in the national investment in brain tumour research to £35 million a year by 2028.
She added: “The statistics around brain tumours are abysmal. They kill more children and adults under the age of 40 than any other cancer, but the Government gives so little to research the disease. They are indiscriminate, and there’s a real disparity with how they are funded and treated compared to other cancers.
“It is so difficult for researchers to get funding to study brain tumours. There are so many brilliant minds with brilliant ideas on how to tackle the disease. There’s the will but they need the funding, it’s devastating.”
Help us prevent families in the future from facing the devastation of a brain tumour diagnosis. Sign our petition now: www.braintumourresearch.org/petition
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