HEALTH / LIVING - UNITED KINGDOM

'You can't win them all': Schoolboy with terminal brain tumour amazes friends and family with his brave attitude to death

• 16-year-old has elected to stop having chemotherapy and hopes to make it to his school prom

• David's mother says she has learnt how to cope thanks to her son's strength

• Children have the same risk of getting a brain tumour as getting meningitis

A schoolboy dying from a brain tumour has stunned his family with his bravery after responding to his terminal condition by saying: 'You can’t win them all.'

David Langton-Gilks, who is just 16, said he has accepted he is 'stuffed' following a five year battle against the disease.

Up until five weeks ago David thought he had beaten the Medulloblastoma tumour but relapsed an hour after posting a video on YouTube telling the world he was recovering.

David Langton-Gilks has decided he wants no more treatment after being told his brain tumour is terminal

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His parents, Sacha and Toby, took him to hospital where scans showed the cancer had returned and spread from his brain down his spine.

Doctors told the family the condition was now terminal and David and his parents decided not to prolong David’s pain and suffering by giving him more chemotherapy or radiation.

The teenager may have just weeks left to live and is focusing on making it to his school leavers prom on June 28.


David said: 'I’ve relapsed several times - but now I’m kind of stuffed. But hey, you can’t win them all.'

David, from Fontmell Magna, in Dorset, hasn’t been able to go to school for the past month because his short-term memory is so badly affected by the tumour. He also relies on 15 tablets a day to help with the pain.

His mother has launched an awareness campaign to highlight the importance of detecting brain tumours in children at an early stage.

David, pictured surfing in Cornwall, had been an active teenager who had loved playing the guitar. He now enjoys cooking

Although David displayed the symptoms of the disease when he was 11, they were not simultaneous and it took five-and-half weeks to get a diagnosis.

Had it been detected sooner, the tumour would have been around half the size it was and David would have stood a much better chance of survival.

The symptoms of the Medulloblastoma brain tumour include vomiting, headaches, and unusual eye movements.

David has undergone several operations since the age of 11 to remove the golf-ball sized tumour but has since suffered two relapses.

David's mother, Sacha Langton-Gilks. She said David has shown her how to cope by being so strong

He said: 'Before I was diagnosed I was feeling really weird, sicky and getting really bad headaches. I thought I was coming down with something.

'It came on so slow that it became like a normal thing.'

Mrs Langton-Gilks, a 44-year-old singing teacher, said: 'If I had realised before he still would have had the cancer but the tumour would have been half the size if I had got there first.

'His tumour was the size of a golf ball. He had two operations on it and then radiotherapy for six weeks alongside chemotherapy, followed by 48 weeks of combined chemotherapy.

'He has been so strong but we are in our fifth week now since we were told the cancer had come back in May.

'It means that next week is the sixth week which is usually the maximum time, so it will be a miracle if he can make it to his prom.

'Just last month we thought everything was alright, we had put the video on Youtube just an hour before he had a Taekwondo lesson.

'He came home saying he couldn’t see properly and couldn’t remember anything.

'When he had scans a few days later it showed the cancer had come back, in his brain and down his spine.

'We sat there and David said ‘no more treatment’, then he was very quiet, children accept it much better than grown ups.

'Instead, I felt like the child, it was horrible and very hard because what adults can’t deal with is them being so honest and accepting.

'He’s taken the bad news extremely well and has all the way through, which is typical David, when he has a terrible day he just says ‘that’s what it’s like’.

'He’s shown me how to cope, you think it would be the other way round but not at all, he is so strong.

'Day-to-day things are hard, he is deteriorating and is very upset that he can’t remember how to play his guitar, so he is spending time cooking and playing games with family.'


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2162578/You-win-Schoolboy-terminal-brain-tumour-amazes-friends-family-brave-attitude-illness.html#ixzz1yVpeMcxz