Laura’s Story
Laura was born in Coventry on 30th August 1975 and has one older sister Emma.
Laura spent most of her childhood as a tomboy living on a farm and growing up in the great outdoors with a sense for adventure. She was successful at school in all aspects but thrived on competitive sports including hockey, running and cross country eventing (horse riding/jumping).
On leaving school Laura went on to study nursing at university before successfully becoming a staff nurse at Warwick hospital.
Laura spent several years as a nurse but later decided to change her career and joined West Midlands Police in 1999, which is where we first met. Laura thoroughly enjoyed her time as a front line police officer dealing with all spectrum’s of society, her selflessness, compassion and care for others shone through, she had the ability to diffuse any situation through her naturally calming demeanour.
Laura and I became a couple in 1999, travelled the world together and were married in 2003. Laura returned to the job she loved and became a home IV nurse for healthcare at home. We had our three beautiful boys and our lives were complete.
In mid 2012 Laura became aware of neck pain which she received physiotherapy for however this persisted for a while which led us to have an MRI.
“Laura would never give into this terrible disease and was at the forefront of many fundraising events in attempts to raise awareness and provide funds for research and hopefully one day a cure.”
Laura was diagnosed with an Astrocytoma Glioma grade 2 inoperable brain tumour on 30 October 2012 with no other symptoms other than the neck pain, she had a biopsy on the 2nd November 2012 during which she suffered a bleed on the brain leaving her with right sided weakness and in a wheelchair for a couple of months. She, as usual pushed hard with physio and pretty much returned to 95% fitness by January 2013, with walking speech etc. The tumour was on the change and throughout December 2012 to February 2013 Laura underwent a course of radiotherapy and was administered a high dose of steroids in an attempt reduce the swelling on her brain. Laura lost all of her long blonde beautiful hair and went form 9 stone to 12.5 stone very quickly, undeterred she continued to run, swim and fight for the next six months as the tumour remained unchanged.
In October 2013 we attended our usual 3 monthly scan and was informed it had begun to grow again thus commenced various types of chemotherapy without any success. We obtained second and third opinions in London and Germany and pushed ahead with further aggressive chemotherapy before the UK consultants admitted defeat. Never to give up we pushed ahead with further opinions now in the US and finally found a surgeon in the North Western medical centre in Chicago who said he could operate.
Throughout all of this the boys, Elliot, Henry and Sebastian (Sebi) watched Laura go though so much pain but never give up.
On 2nd September 2014 Laura had an awake craniotomy and underwent brain surgery with local anaesthetic for over six hours in Chicago. Seven days later Laws flew home and began to improve from some right sided weakness and confusion left behind from surgery, as we approached Christmas there was ongoing improvement and an optimistic outlook. Christmas came and went and the new year began, Laura started to lose mobility on her right side and another scan revealed further complications with the tumour, the last attempt with medical intervention was a new drug called Avastin, again to no avail.
Laws was a social animal and loved to talk,so it was a cruel that the disease now terminal took away Laura’s ability to communicate, she was unable to speak which became worse over weeks, mobility was gone and we were back to using a wheelchair. Laura remained at home but needed full time care from myself for everything as well as looking after the boys.
In August 2015 Laura was admitted to the Marie Curie Hospice Solihull as I could no longer assist Laura with 24hr care, she was very distressed, agitated, unable to talk, walk and confused. The disease took hold of Laura and on 8th September 2015, (Sebi’s fifth birthday) Laura passed away in my arms.
Laura’s death has affected many people none more-so than the boys and I who have been left without our beautiful mummy and wife. Laura would never give into this terrible disease and was at the forefront of many fundraising events in attempts to raise awareness and provide funds for research and hopefully one day a cure.
We love you and miss you, Mark, Elliot, Henry & Sebi xxxx
Visit The Laura Fischer-Beards Fund Just Giving Page to help Mark and his supporters raise money in memory of Laura.
