A former Royal Marine told by doctors his headaches and dizzy spells were probably because of dehydration or a migraine was then given 12 to 18 months to live after a terminal brain cancer diagnosis.
James Greenwood, 42, who is based in Wales with his girlfriend, Rachel Jones, 31, said he started to experience dizziness and “constant”, “dull” headaches in May while chatting to his brother-in-law.
“My vision was wobbling a little bit and I needed to have a bit of a sit down,” he said.
“I had always had a clean bill of health so I thought it was a little unusual,” Mr. Greenwood told PA Life.
Soon after, Greenwood said he started to suffer with headaches which began as a “constant” and “dull” pain.
He booked an appointment with his GP for June 5 and was told his symptoms were probably linked to dehydration, and he could be overdue an eye test, as he wears glasses and his job involves working with computer screens.
Greenwood was also given a blood test and an electrocardiogram (ECG), a non-invasive test which measures the electrical activity of the heart, but said both tests came back with “no concerns”.
After “plodding along” for a few days, he had an “unusual episode” in Manchester on June 10.
“I was walking across town and it was like an out-of-body experience, everything around me slowed down which caused me concern,” he said.
He secured a same-day appointment with his GP and was told his symptoms were consistent with migraines.
“I’ve never suffered with migraines in the past so I was skeptical,” Greenwood said.
“As with the first GP appointment, I was pushing for a scan of some kind – maybe it was a sixth sense or something but I just knew how I felt and I was trying to get some peace of mind more than anything.”
He said he was prescribed migraine relief medication and told to make another appointment by the end of the week if it had not had the desired effect.
However Greenwood woke up at about 5am on June 12 with a “severe” headache which prompted him to go to the emergency room, and after “persistent” requests for a CT scan, a walnut-sized mass was discovered on the right temporal lobe of his brain.
Greenwood underwent brain surgery to remove the tumour on June 28 and was given the “bombshell” news in August it had been identified as a grade four glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, and given a prognosis of 12 to 18 months.
“There are some days where you have to kind of pinch yourself and question whether this is actually happening,” Greenwood said.
“Receiving the news is incredibly tough and you’ve got that initial period of shock but after that, you’re forced to process it and try and take the good from it.”
After a six-week course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, Greenwood is waiting to see if the treatment will have improved his prognosis, before starting a more intensive course of chemotherapy at the end of October.
“Strangely, it’s been kind of liberating,” he said.
“I think everybody’s probably guilty of taking people for granted, your loved ones, friends, family, but it’s had the effect of reconnecting me with certain old friends, I think it’s drawn the family closer.”
“It alters your perspective and it’s a bit clichéd but you’re trying to savour every moment.”
Greenwood has tried to “savor” each moment since his diagnosis, attributing this mindset to the training he received in the Royal Marines, in which he served for five years from the age of 18.
He and three of his friends ran the 32km Edale Skyline in England’s Peak District on September 21 to raise money for Brain Tumour Research, raising more than $27,252 so far, and he hopes “other people may reap the benefits” of his efforts in future, saying it was a bucket list item to raise money for a charity.
“People who have commented on how positively I’m responding to this recent bombshell, I would largely attribute a lot of that mindset to what the Marines really harnessed,” Mr Greenwood said.
“The commando training was designed so anything you had to tackle in life, you could always refer back to it.”
“For me, it’s about trying to be as normal as possible and there’s a lot of belief in people saying positivity is a big benefit in combating illnesses and I just can’t comprehend in dealing with this in any other way.”
To find out more, visit Mr Greenwood’s JustGiving page here
