Simon’s story
It was very sad for us when Simon passed away on 29 December 2012. He had been fighting a brain tumour since March 2010.
Simon was the sort of person who never stayed still for very long. He was a good musician and had written some songs. His main job was in sales; he could sell you anything and was very good at it.
Then, just after Christmas 2012, he suffered a seizure. He was admitted to hospital and later discharged himself. He seemed OK for a while, but later started to not remember things and become quite angry over minor things. I knew something was wrong, and managed to get him to the doctors. He was admitted into Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital where they discovered he had a tumour on his brain. Two weeks later he was operated on at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, followed by chemotherapy and radiotherapy which seemed to be working.
The tumour left him unable to coordinate his speech with what he was thinking, so people thought he was a bit stupid, which was far from the truth and resulted in Simon becoming very frustrated. This did improve.
“The treatment that Simon got from his doctors and the hospital was brilliant, but they could only do so much. We will never forget him and I want to raise awareness in my small way. I think that maybe if we all had been more aware of the early symptoms…who knows.”
He had some rehab which to be honest was not very good. He moved into a two bedroom flat in Norwich. He was pleased about this because since his divorce he had been living in rented accommodation and stayed with me quite a lot. Then he started getting seizures again, which I once witnessed – it was very frightening. His seizures were eventually controlled with medication.
We all thought that he was going to be OK. He found it quite hard as his speech was odd and he was unable to fill in forms or write properly, so I did all of this for him.
At the end of September 2012 he phoned me in a terrible state. He couldn’t do anything with his arm as it had become very weak. So we went back to the doctors and another scan revealed that the tumour had come back.
Another operation at Addenbrooke’s followed, and then Simon was back at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. They had done all they could but he was sill very weak on one side of his body, so it was suggested that Simon attended rehab once more. His operation was on November 12 2012.
Simon went to rehab and he had only been there for two weeks when they believed he had another seizure and somehow managed to contract pneumonia. It was so bad that we thought he might not make it, but he did.
Following another scan, it was found that the tumour had come back again. It was so quick and really puzzled me. Simon was so weak that they couldn’t do anything more for him, and he sadly passed away, aged just 43.
Val Nicolaou