Dad urges petition support after daughter’s “sledgehammer” diagnosis

Sudip Roy

1 min read

19 May 2023

A dad is urging people to support our petition after his family’s lives “changed in an instant” when his 10-year-old daughter was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour.

Thalia Fifi Toseland was diagnosed with an inoperable diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) in March 2023 and has just completed six weeks of radiotherapy. Her parents, Chris and Natali, will meet the cancer team next week to discuss Thalia’s options which include chemotherapy and the possibility of going abroad for a clinical trial.

DIPG is a high-grade brain tumour which most often occurs in children. It has an extremely poor prognosis of just eight to 12 months.

Chris said: “When we were told Thalia had a DIPG and it was inoperable, it was like a sledgehammer had come down on us. There’s no standard clinical approach to this type of disease and it’s hard to comprehend that nothing can be done. In the UK, there are very limited options. There are more options abroad but only at trial stage, so it is experimental.”

Chris is now calling on people to sign our petition asking 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.

He added: “I’ve signed the petition and encourage others to do so because money is so important; without it, there is no research. The Government needs to invest much more into studying DIPGs because so much is still unknown about them. Our whole life as we knew it changed in an instant. It’s devastating but my wife Natali and I haven’t had the time or brain space to contemplate it. We’re just riding a wave which we know will crash.”

We need to reach 100,000 signatures by Tuesday 31^st October in the hope of prompting a parliamentary debate. Help us reach our goal – sign and share the petition now: www.braintumourresearch.org/petition