Ben Cornforth was nursing a pretty nasty headache one Friday night.
The then-21-year-old thought he’d had a few too many beers the night before and was relaxing in front of the TV at his university flat in Nottingham.
But he soon found he couldn’t follow what was happening on the screen – and couldn’t speak.
‘I felt totally out of it and dizzy. When I went to the toilet, the room felt like it was spinning and I fell over,’ Ben, now 24, said.
‘I lived with my girlfriend at the time, so I said to her, ‘I don’t want to alarm you, but I can’t talk’.
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‘At first, I tried to hide the issues because I’d been drinking the night before, so I thought I was just having the worst hangover possible.’
Ben was taken to hospital, where he was kept overnight. What he thought was a hangover from hell turned out to be something a little more concerning.
Ben, now 24, added: ‘When we were called into a room, I was told there was something on my brain that wasn’t supposed to be there.
‘Doctors suspected it was a cyst, so I called my parents so they could travel up to Nottingham – it was really difficult having to phone my mum to tell her what had happened.’
Ben had an MRI two days later, which revealed a benign tumour that medics suspected he had had for most of his life.
He was given anti-seizure medication and discharged – but after two more seizures, he was brought back in.
A follow-up scan showed activity in the tumour, which meant Ben would need major surgery.
In May 2023, Ben underwent a six-hour craniotomy surgery in which a portion of his skull was temporarily removed to access the brain – during which he had to be awake.
He said: ‘They said they’d take as much of the tumour as possible, but they couldn’t take anything off my brain, so they got as close to the brain as they could.
‘They would prod a piece of the tumour with the logic that if I stopped talking, they couldn’t cut that.
‘They explained they’d do a biopsy on it afterwards.’
The biopsy revealed Ben had stage 4 brain cancer, the treatment for which was six weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy followed by a year of daily chemotherapy tablets – and, according to him, he’s not out of the woods yet.
He said: ‘My whole process going through treatment and with recovery was to always have things as normal as possible.
‘I know I’ll need more treatment in future, but for now I am off treatment and feeling happy and healthy.
‘I try to make the most of every day.’
Ben has since joined Teenage Cancer Trust’s Youth Advisory Group which helps to shape the support provided to young people.
He also recently completed the London Marathon, raising more than £10,000 for the charity that helped him during and after treatment.
To donate to Ben’s fundraising page, click here.