Mike Gall is asking community to givealittle

Two weeks before he was diagnosed with a grade four brain tumour Mike Gall cancelled his life insurance.

The 48-year-old said he and his wife Helen couldn’t afford the payments as they were only on one income due to his being sick with terrible migraines.

When he first went to his doctor to find out what was causing the pain, he was given some pain killers.

Soon they were so bad that he was vomiting and unable to get out of bed to go to work.

At CT scan was then ordered and he went along to Waikato Hospital expecting to be back home that night.

Instead the doctor said they’d found a mass and he was to stay in hospital on morphine and steroids while the swelling in his brain went down.

‘‘I was quite shell shocked,’’ Helen said.

‘‘They said it had only been there about 8 weeks.’’

During that week the tumour doubled in size.

Mike has now had a brain operation to remove as much of the mass and another to put in a shunt.

He’s also gone through radiation and chemotherapy to target the ‘‘fingers’’ of cancer that are embedded in his brain and has one round left of free chemotherapy.

After that, he has to fund his own treatment which entails a stronger chemo available privately in Auckland.

That’s expected to cost between $30,000 and $40,000 or more.

Despite having ‘‘teary moments and ‘why us?’ times’’ the couple were upbeat.

They were grateful to Mike’s daughter Kirsty, their ‘‘rock’’, who has started a givealittle page to raise funds for Mike’s medical needs and any bucket list activities he wanted to do.

So far $328 from ten donors has been raised through givealittle.co.nz/cause/ helpformike.

"The doctors said I was a fighter and had put up one of the biggest fights they had ever seen,’’ Mike said.

And he’s decided to do just that.

They have planned a trip back to New Plymouth with his two grandchildren so they can see where he grew up.

There was another grandchild due at the end of July.

‘‘He can’t go anywhere until that is done,’’ Helen said. ‘‘He can’t go anywhere full-stop; I won’t allow it.’’

PHOTO: ABBY BROWN Mike and Helen Gall want people to be aware that migraines, which Mike had been suffering from, can be a sign of brain cancer, which Mike has been diagnosed with from this scan.