{"id":39817,"date":"2025-08-02T05:51:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T05:51:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/39817\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T05:51:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T05:51:14","slug":"father-of-two-with-inoperable-brain-tumour-warns-others-about-the-strange-symptom-he-ignored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/39817\/","title":{"rendered":"Father-of-two with inoperable brain tumour warns others about the strange symptom he ignored"},"content":{"rendered":"

A fit and healthy father-of-two received a devastating brain tumour diagnosis after a bizarre symptom triggered a violent seizure\u2014a lasting smell of bleach.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sam Suriakumar, 40, from London<\/a>, didn’t think much of it the first time he smelled the strong ammonia-like chemical, assuming that his wife, Sindu, had just cleaned the bathroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘The smell of ammonia, bleach or some sort of cleaning agent was almost filling up my mouth, it was really strong,’ he recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I felt like I needed to lean against the wall to stand, I felt very strange but didn’t think much of it.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, when the strong smell returned the following morning whilst he was working out outdoors, accompanied by a bout of dizziness, alarm bells began to ring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the tube home, the musician suffered a violent grand mal seizure\u2014also known as a tonic-clonic seizure\u2014which causes a person’s muscles to stiffen and their limbs to jerk uncontrollably as they lose consciousness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recalling the lead up to the events, Mr Suriakumar said he felt drained of energy on his commute home on the busy Northern Line of the London Underground<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I closed my eyes and it felt like half an hour went by, but we had only moved one stop,’ he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sam <\/p>\n

Sam first smelled the strong chemical in the bathroom so didn’t think much of it, until it hit him whilst he was working out outdoors\u00a0<\/p>\n

He closed his eyes once more, hoping to drift off on his journey home, but to his surprise he woke up 48 hours later at St George’s Hospital, Tooting.<\/p>\n

He said: ‘My medical team told me that I had suffered a massive grand mal seizure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I seized so bad that I dislocated my shoulder,’ he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The father-of-two was rushed to hospital in an ambulance, during which time he suffered two more seizures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a series of tests including a CT scan which showed a ‘large shadow’ across the left side of his brain, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which doctors suspected was a low grade glioma on February 4 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When he was told that the tumour was covering the part of his brain responsible for speech, movement and memory, he said his whole world ‘spiralled out of control.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘My mind went straight to my girls, who were only three and five at the time,’ he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘All of a sudden, your priorities become very clear.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sam <\/p>\n

Sam now has regular scans to monitor how successful the treatment was as his surgeons look out for the tell-tale signs of cancer\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite Mr Suriakumar being ‘in the best shape of his life’, doctors were hesitant to operate on the tumour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Instead, they decided to go for a less invasive approach, treating Mr\u00a0Suriakumar symptoms rather than the tumour itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘It was a case of not wanting to poke the bear,’ he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For two years his condition remained stable, enabling him to run the London Marathon in 2023 to raise money for Brain Tumour Research and becomes a support ambassador raising \u00a360,000 to date.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, in July 2023 when he was in Brazil for a wedding, Mr\u00a0Suriakumar received a sobering call from his neurosurgeon: the tumour had grown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘It knocked me to my feet,’ the musician recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shortly after flying home, he underwent surgery to have some of the tumour removed\u2014which confirmed a diffuse oligodendroglioma, a type of glioma which is often benign but can become cancerous.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just two weeks later, he started the first of 30 gruelling rounds of radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Glioblastoma, <\/p>\n

Glioblastoma, which is the most common type of cancerous brain tumour in adults, also killed the Labour politician Dame Tessa Jowell in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Wanted star Tom Parker died in March 2022 following a year-and-a-half long battle with glioblastoma aged just 33 (pictured in December 2021)<\/p>\n

This was followed by nine long months of chemotherapy, which the father-of-two successfully completed in September last year.<\/p>\n

Determined not to give up and lose faith, the avid gym-goer completed the HYROX indoor fitness competition in Belgium just six months later\u2014tackling eight kilometers of running and eight functional workout exercises.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His medical team are now closely monitoring his condition through regular scans every six months to better understand the impact of the treatment, in what Mr\u00a0Suriakumar described as a ‘sitting on the fence’ phase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Looking back, he said: ‘Brain tumours are the biggests killers of children and adults before the age of 40, so reaching that milestone on July 26 was a big deal for me.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

He is now urging anyone in a similar situation to stay positive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said: ‘Your brain talks to every single part of your body and it’s so important to have a positive mindset.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘It’s not going to come every single day, but try to find those things that inspire and encourage you to move forward.’\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Over 12,000 patients in Britain are diagnosed with a brain tumour each year, with about half of these cases being cancerous.<\/p>\n

Glioblastomas, one of the deadliest types of brain tumour, have been highlighted in recent years after killing a number of famous faces.<\/p>\n

The disease, which is the most common type of cancerous brain tumour in adults, killed the Labour politician Dame Tessa Jowell in 2018.<\/p>\n

And in March 2022, The Wanted singer Tom Parker died following an 18-month battle with the cancer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fit and healthy father-of-two received a devastating brain tumour diagnosis after a bizarre symptom triggered a violent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9548,97,59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-39817","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-brazil","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}