When Kieran Shingler first started experiencing grogginess and a runny nose, he put it down to having the flu—unaware it was a warning sign of the brain tumour that would kill him.
Mr Shingler, an HGV driver from Warrington, Cheshire, first started feeling under the weather on Bonfire Night in 2022.
Aged just 23 at the time and in training for a triathlon, he took a Covid test—but after it came back negative, he put feeling unwell down to the flu.
But over the following weeks he began to feel worse, was struggling to keep food down and had ‘excruciating headaches’.
Later, he was diagnosed with a grade three astrocytoma, a type of fast-growing cancerous brain tumour.
Sadly, despite surgeries and rounds of gruelling radiotherapy and chemotherapy, Mr Shingler died in a hospice on December 14, just over a week before Christmas.
Mr Shingler’s cancer was discovered in November 2022 after his GP referred him to Warrington Hospital in Cheshire by his GP, where medics initially suspected he had meningitis.
A CT scan revealed he had a mass on the brain, and he was blue-lighted to the Walton Centre in Liverpool, where they specialise in neurology.
After an MRI scan revealed a tumour was blocking cerebrospinal fluid from moving naturally between his skull and his spine, he underwent an endoscopic third ventriculostomy (ETV), to drain and release the trapped fluid from around the brain.
The surgery was deemed a success, and after Mr Shingler began to feel better, he was operated on for a second time, undergoing a craniotomy, a high-risk procedure to remove as much of the tumour as possible and take a biopsy.
Tragically, Mr Shingler was left with short-term memory loss, a side effect of the surgery, developed a fever and began screaming in intense pain.
Doctors told Mr Shingler and his family that the ETV surgery had failed and he would need to undergo another operation to fit an external shunt which would divert the fluid from his brain to another part of the body.
Just an hour before the surgery, on December 29, 2022, the family were told he had a grade three astrocytoma, a fast growing cancerous tumour.
Symptoms of an astrocytoma tumour include headaches, difficulty speaking, changes in vision, cognitive difficulties and seizures.
‘Until this point, they hadn’t told us the results of the biopsy as it was near Christmas,’ said his girlfriend Abbie Henstock, 26, who described it as ‘all a blur’.
They also told the family that he had a life expectancy of just 12 months prognosis, but they decided not to tell him until January 2023, when he was back home.
Mr Shingler was told he needed 30 sessions of radiotherapy and chemotherapy by an oncologist at Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool on January 5, 2023.
In a glimmer of hope, an MRI and CT scan showed the tumour was shrinking when the gruelling treatments ended in February that year.
However just five months later, he was told it had stopped working and the tumour was growing again.
To try and stop the growth, they put him on another dose of chemotherapy called lomustine, and initially the tumour started to shrink again.
But sadly, Mr Shingler had to stop treatment because there was evidence of liver damage.
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.
Abbie said: ‘At every three-monthly scan we attended, we were told that his tumour was shrinking and shrinking.’
The tumour, she explained, which had started at 5.5cm shrunk to 0.35cm at its smallest ‘with 19 months of no treatment’.
But heartbreakingly, in a scan in June this year, they were told his tumour had started to grow again.
In a statement, his family said: ‘Kieran lived with his brain tumour for just over 3 years and fought with immense courage, determination, always willing to try new things that were thrown his way and always having a smile on his face.
‘He was the most bravest most inspiring man.’
They continued: ‘Kieran was the cheekiest, most chilled out person. He would light up a room with his personality, have a passion to try anything new, was a proper foodie, loved a shop on Temu, a true LFC supporter.
‘He was always so incredibly grateful for the support he had during his diagnosis and couldn’t quite believe how many people knew his story.
‘He’s in no more pain, cancer free and up there with his gorgeous mum. We don’t know how we will carry on without him, but we will as that’s what he would have wanted.’
