Dad's brain cancer plea after migraines dismissed

After being told a few times his migraines were caused by dehydration, Kash Raju knew something was not right.

The 33-year-old from Derby said the sudden death of a friend from a blood clot prompted him to go to A&E, where a CT scan revealed he had brain cancer.

Given less than 12 months to live, Raju is now raising £200,000 for treatment abroad and urges others to "advocate yourself" and get persistent symptoms checked.

"There's nobody that knows your body like you, you have to stand by that to get a diagnosis," said the father-of-three.

Raju said he started to develop "quite a lot of headaches" that would last for up to two hours, shortly after starting a new job.

He said he initially thought these were due to the stresses of work and the demands of being a father.

Raju then started to have retinal migraines that blurred his vision and led to him seeing flashing lights, zigzag patterns or coloured spots or lines.

"It was quickly dismissed and it was put down to dehydration at the time so that was quite upsetting for me to be honest," said Raju.

With the GP's advice and opticians confirming there was "nothing wrong" with his eyesight, Raju continued with his day-to-day life with continued headaches.

"At the time of a funeral for a past friend who passed away from a blood clot, I was upstairs in the Gudwara and I was receiving these same migraines," said Raju.

"There was a voice inside of me saying if you don't get yourself checked out now something's going to happen."

Raju then had a CT scan in A&E on 30 July, which revealed he had a grade 4 astrocytoma.

"They showed me the image and they said there is quite a large growth on your brain," he said.

According to the NHS, more than 12,000 people are diagnosed with a primary brain tumour in the UK each year, of which about half are cancerous.

"The first thing I asked about was prognosis and they said typically this is 12 to 18 months, sometimes it's longer, sometimes less," Raju said.

"I'm a father of a six, five, and two year-old. I love my wife to bits. I'm a proud son, proud brother. So my first thinking was I need to be around to look after everyone and protect them.

"My mother put her forehead to my forehead and said 'we're gonna get through this' and that's kept me strong and positive."

Two weeks after his diagnosis, Raju underwent emergency brain surgery at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, which was able to remove 80% of the tumour.

Raju is now two weeks into a six-week course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy with the NHS to tackle the rest of the tumour, which could be followed by a further six months of chemotherapy.

Wanting to explore every reasonable option available and believing treatment options after chemotherapy on the NHS are "very limited", Raju is looking elsewhere for treatments.

According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), standard NHS care for primary brain tumours relies on surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy, with immunotherapy drugs not approved as standard frontline treatments.

Raju is aiming to raise £200,000 to access personalised immunotherapy and dendritic cell treatments abroad in countries like India, Germany and the US.

With more than £165,000 raised so far, he has said he is in "awe" of people's generosity.

"The power of community is amazing," he added. "It's really touched me to be honest. It touches my heart, my wife, my family, we are in awe of everyone."

Raju said any money left over from the treatment would be used to support other people facing brain cancer or similar life-limiting conditions.

"Whatever we can do to help people, that's what I want the money to go towards as well," he said.

As well as raising money, Raju said he wanted to encourage people to get checked out, particularly men and members of the Punjabi South Asian community, where he said cancer remained a taboo subject.

"Not a lot of people in our own community discuss this enough," he said. "I need to get the word out there's going to be a lot more people like me, especially men my age.

"I'm not a medical expert, but I'm trying my best to give advice to people.

"If I didn't get this checked out they mentioned within six months I probably would have dropped or not woke up one morning.

"We need to get checked out. Men and women, kids, everyone needs to get checked out and make sure they know what they're doing with their own health and body."

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