Exclusive:More awareness of brain cancer needed after it took Edinburgh mum six months to get diagnosis

Theodora Burrell, 39, only received her diagnosis of an incurable grade four glioblastoma after she went to A&E feeling like her “head was going to explode”.

Around 70 per cent of Scots with a brain tumour end up having their diagnosis made in A&E after it is missed by GPs.

March is brain tumour awareness month, and Ms Burrell is hoping greater awareness will lead to more funding for research and quicker diagnoses.

Speaking to The Scotsman, Ms Burrell, said: “I started having symptoms in December 2021, really strong headaches, migraine-like symptoms, problems with my vision, which then moved onto sickness.

“I was being sick all the time but nobody else around me was poorly.

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“I was in and out of my GP for six months and as time went on I got progressively more and more poorly to the point where the pressure in my head was so strong that I was struggling to bend over and I couldn’t lie down, so I was having to sleep upright.

“I saw various different GPs and eventually in June 2022 I said to my family ‘I need to go to A&E, I cannot cope with this pain any longer’. I felt like my head was going to explode.”

She went to A&E at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and was immediately given a CT scan. Around half an hour later, she got the news that she had a six-and-a-half centimetre cancerous tumour on her brain.

Ms Burrell, who is a ceramics expert on the Antiques Roadshow, was moved to the clinical neurosciences department and told that without treatment, she would be dead within three months.

She said: “It was absolutely wild, it’s kind of one of those out of body experiences, although a part of me felt validated and vindicated because I had been so poorly and knew something was not right.

“I knew nothing about brain tumours, I had no idea they were incurable.”

At the time, her son was just 19-months-old.

Ms Burrell, who is also patron for the charity Brain Tumour Research, has just completed a round of radiotherapy and is now looking forward to getting married in three weeks’ time.

“I will be having more treatment, but the treatment options are definitely running out and it is just plastering over the cracks of what is now quite a fast-growing variant of the original tumour,” she said.

“I’m getting married in three weeks - the wedding has been difficult to plan because it’s trying to work around guessing how I’m going to be.

“I’m very relieved it’s happening in three weeks and not further into the year because I should be well enough to get through the next three weeks.

“It’s not the life I would have chosen and not something I would wish on anybody else.”

She said anyone who has the symptoms she had at the beginning should think about going to A&E themselves.

She said: “It’s a tricky one, but if I am honest and somebody had those symptoms, I would say go to A&E.

“I don’t know if that’s good advice, but that’s what I would suggest because I went backwards and forwards with my GP.

“We need to think about how GPs can be better supported, better funded and better educated.

“If there are extra things that indicate there’s something more than a headache going on, such as visual problems or being sick, you need further referral or a brain scan.”