A St Helens man wonder if he was "going to die next week" after collapsing.
Matthew Montgomery, from Eccleston Park in St Helens, was about to graduate as a solicitor, was moving to London and planning his best mate's wedding when he had a seizure in May 2019. He was taken to Manchester Royal Infirmary for tests before being sent to The Walton Centre, a specialist neurology hospital in Liverpool, where he got a shock diagnosis.
He told the ECHO: "I wanted to get qualified, get to a firm I'm happy in and start building things from there. All of a sudden, I'm told I've got a brain tumour, but I didn't really understand at that point what it means. You know, 'Am I going to die next week? Is it going to take a few years? Is it going to need an operation?' I was completely on my own. I managed to hold it together a little bit with the support of my family and now my girlfriend."
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Matthew's tumour is a pilocytic astrocytoma, a slow-growing tumour that starts in the brain or spinal chord. To this day, Matthew's doctors are still unsure whether the seizure and tumour are linked. He said: "The seizure may have come on due to being very stressed and having a lack of sleep, and it just so happened that through the tests they were doing, they found this, and I would've been born with it. I'm quite grateful I had the seizure in a way because I wouldn't have known otherwise."
Now 30 and living in Clapham in London, he has appointments every six months to a year to check for growth, and he takes two tablets a day to stop the seizures. Matthew said: "I just go about living life as normal. I just wait for the date to come around and take the train up to Liverpool for a scan."
He's now taking better care of himself by doing yoga and eating healthily. He's also a mental health first aider at work, which helps him understand his own emotions. On Sunday, October 2, Matthew ran the London Marathon in 3:53:26 to raise money for The Walton Centre. He told the ECHO: "The Walton Centre is the most perfect place to put my time and effort into."
Matthew only told colleagues about the diagnosis when he started fundraising. He said: "Hitting the send button on the email to my colleagues and creating a fundraising page was terrifying for me because you're sharing with the world and people who know you, something incredible private."
He added: "People don't often talk about their illnesses or things that may be going on, but fundraising is allowing me to speak up. It's really helped me to process it because I'm quite an introverted person, quite quiet. I wouldn't have told anyone."
You can donate to Matthew's fundraiser here.
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