{"id":46370,"date":"2025-08-05T20:51:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T20:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/46370\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T20:51:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T20:51:22","slug":"man-26-with-deadly-brain-cancer-shares-the-common-symptoms-he-mistook-for-the-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/46370\/","title":{"rendered":"Man, 26, with deadly brain cancer shares the common symptoms he mistook for the flu"},"content":{"rendered":"

A man who thought he had the flu<\/a>\u00a0was devastated to be told he has just one year to live after his grogginess turned out to be a deadly brain tumour.<\/p>\n

Kieran Shingler, 26, from Warrington, suddenly began experiencing a headache, sore throat and runny nose on Bonfire Night 2022, that he initially suspected was Covid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When he tested negative for the virus, he and his girlfriend, Abbie Henstock, 26, brushed off his symptoms as the flu.<\/p>\n

But, in the following weeks he felt so unwell that he was struggling to keep food down and had ‘excruciating headaches’.<\/p>\n

Previously, his girlfriend said: ‘He was so fit, he was doing a triathlon, working out.’<\/p>\n

So, she added: ‘We just knew something wasn’t right\u2014this wasn’t our Kieran.’<\/p>\n

Just two weeks later, when his condition worsened, his mother Lisa, who passed away last year, aged 52, called his GP.<\/p>\n

The doctor told him go to Warrington Hospital in Cheshire, where they initially suspected he had meningitis.<\/p>\n

\"Kieran \"Kieran, <\/p>\n

The previously fit-and-healthy 26-year-old Kieran was diagnosed with a deadly brain tumour<\/p>\n

But when a CT scan revealed he had a mass on the brain, he was blue-lighted to the Walton Centre in Liverpool, where they specialise in neurology.<\/p>\n

There an MRI scan revealed a tumour was blocking fluid from going to his spine, so his girlfriend explained, he needed emergency surgery.<\/p>\n

He underwent an endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV)\u2014a procedure used to treat the build-up of fluid in the brain’s ventricle.<\/p>\n

Initially the surgery was successful, and Kieran began to feel better, so he went in for a second surgery.<\/p>\n

This was a craniotomy, a procedure to remove as much of the tumour as possible, and take a biopsy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But sadly, since the operation, he suffers from short-term memory loss, one of the side effects of the surgery.<\/p>\n

If this wasn’t traumatic enough, while waiting for the results of the biopsy, he started getting a fever and began screaming in intense pain.<\/p>\n

The ETV surgery had failed, the doctors told them, so he was admitted to the hospital again for a surgery to fit an external shunt\u2014to divert fluid to another part of the body.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The 26-year-old, Kieran, who thought he had the flu, on a hospital bed before his third surgery<\/p>\n

Just an hour before the surgery, on December 29, 2022, the family were told he had a grade three astrocytoma\u2014a fast growing cancerous tumour.<\/p>\n

Symptoms of an astrocytoma tumour include headaches, difficulty speaking, changes in vision, cognitive difficulties and seizures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0‘Until this point, they hadn’t told us the results of the biopsy as it was near Christmas,’ said Abbie, who described it as ‘all a blur’.<\/p>\n

At this stage the biopsy hadn’t been able to determine what grade the tumour was\u2014which indicates how quickly the cancer might grow and spread.<\/p>\n

This was when his girlfriend was told his 12 months prognosis, but the family decided not tell Kieran until after Christmas in January 2023, when he was back home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘When I was diagnosed with the brain tumour, I was scared, angry and always questioned why,’ Kieran said.<\/p>\n

He was told he needed 30 sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy by an oncologist at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool on January 5, 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a glimmer of hope, an MRI and CT scan showed the tumour was shrinking when the gruelling treatments ended in February that year.<\/p>\n

\"He <\/p>\n

He then underwent extensive radiotherapy and chemotherapy to try and shrink the tumour<\/p>\n

\"Kieran <\/p>\n

Kieran with his girlfriend Abbie before he discovered he had the devastating brain tumour\u00a0<\/p>\n

However just five months later, he was told it had stopped working and the tumour was growing again.<\/p>\n

To try and stop the growth, they put him on another dose of chemotherapy called lomustine, and initially the tumour started to shrink again.<\/p>\n

But sadly, Kieran had to stop treatment because there was evidence of liver damage.<\/p>\n

Initially the plan was for him to just have some time off from treatment so the liver could repair itself before six more cycles of a higher dose of chemotherapy.<\/p>\n

And Abbie said: ‘At every three-monthly scan we attended, we were told that his tumour was shrinking and shrinking.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

The tumour, she explained, which had started at 5.5cm shrunk to 0.35cm at its smallest ‘with 19 months of no treatment’.<\/p>\n

But heartbreakingly, in his most recent scan in June this year, they were told his tumour had started to grow again.<\/p>\n

The couple set up the online fundraising page <\/a>Kieran’s Krew\u2014initially to raise money for brain charities\u2014but it has evolved into much more.<\/p>\n

They have raised more than \u00a357,000 for different brain tumour charities including the Brain Tumour Charity.<\/p>\n

The funds have also gone towards paying for different therapies at home, such as an oxygen machine and red light\u2014which may help healing and reduce inflammation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who thought he had the flu\u00a0was devastated to be told he has just one year to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[97,59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-46370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46370","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=46370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}