Student tells how his life was saved by tumour surgery

A 20-year-old man who was told he had an inoperable brain tumour has spoken of the surgery which saved his life.

Jake West, who had suffered with daily epileptic seizures, received the bleak diagnosis from surgeons two years ago, leaving his family fearing the worst.

But the Canterbury College student, of St Alban’s Road, Hersden, has now remarkably been given the all-clear after advanced surgery at the King’s College Hospital in London.

He told of his experience as he took part in a fashion show at Guy’s Hospital to mark National Cancer Survivors Day.

Jake said: “I met some really nice people and we were able to share our stories.

“I hadn’t really spoken about my condition before, and I felt quite lucky compared to some people there who were still undergoing treatment.”

After his successful surgery, which requires follow-up checks in London, Jake is planing to resume his engineering studies and go to university in September.

But there could have been a very different outcome had it not been for the persistence of his mother, Tiffany, a trained nurse.

Having experienced problems with his eyes from the age of 11, Jake recalled that he began to suffer epileptic seizures during his teenage years, which became increasingly worse.

He said it was his mum who pressed for an MRI brain scan in 2013 after Jake suffered glandular fever that worsened his condition.

He said: “It was a shock to find out about my diagnosis but mostly for my family, as I have always been the kind of person to take things as they come.

“My health had deteriorated, but I didn’t feel that bad.

“I went to see a surgeon at King’s who told me that they couldn’t operate without a risk of brain damage. But they said that I could speak to a specialist in epileptic tumours.

“He told me that if the medication I was taking wasn’t controlling my seizures, then he would operate, which was great after people had told us nothing could be done.

“Life wasn’t great then. The seizures were limiting things I could do. I just wanted to live my life as any other 20-year-old would, and so I gave my consent to the surgery, which they did last March.

“The operation was a success. It was tough recovering from it as the area of the brain that they had operated on was the part that controls emotions, but my family and friends were amazing with me.”